


Do I Want to Know

by orphan_account, Ursaborea



Category: vampire - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Sex, Vampires, and all that good stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:17:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 53,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1467529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ursaborea/pseuds/Ursaborea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To quote the fantastic prompt oraclehill offered up:  "SO MUCH HOMOEROTIC BLOOD SHARING IS GOING TO HAPPEN."</p><p>Story about a kid from a super-religious family and his foster brother, who by the time he hit 18 had enough of small town Connecticut and left for NYC only to go missing and turn up months later, turned into a vampire.  Much angst (and sexytimes) ensue as the brothers try to continue their friendship and lives together, discovering that they have some less than familial feelings for each other, all while trying to keep the foster brother's existence a secret.</p><p>Yup, that sums it up nicely.  Have fun, kids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Crawling Back to You

Hell had always been described to him at Sunday School, in church and in the Bible as a literal cavern of fire and brimstone, the rendering of every human's worst idea of torture - of burning alive, of an eternity of torment, of disgrace leading to a place far from God's love. He'd always believed them, in the vague, abstract way that he believed in everything the Bible said - the same as he believed that the world was created by God's design, that his every salvation existed between the thin pages of a single book. He'd never had reason to doubt it, any of it. He'd never had reason to consider what Hell was really like, whether it was so literal. Some thought it was an inferno, some thought it was blackness. He knew otherwise. 

 

This was Hell. 

 

Having to go on, having to go to class and do homework and talk to people and eat and breathe was Hell. Having no one to talk to, no one who would admit that anything was wrong, that the world  _couldn't_  go on, it  _couldn't_ , there  _was_  no moving forward. Everyone said it would pass. Everyone was wrong. It was God's will, they said, and sometimes the young were taken early. Gabriel's murderer would go to Hell, they said. 

 

Assuming Gabriel  _had_  a murderer, and hadn't simply been eaten by wolves or coyotes or something, which occasionally still happened in Connecticut. They said they'd found blood in the car. The windshield had been smashed in. Maybe he'd hit a deer, and got out of the car to investigate, and then wolves had - no, don't think about it,  _don't think about it._

 

After a while, Elijah couldn't stay in the house. He couldn't listen to them, couldn't deal with their smiles and their conviction and having to exist without falling apart. Even schoolwork couldn't distract him; turned out he could study and think about his brother's murder at the same time. Point one for multi-tasking. What had forever been his comfort zone, his classes and his clubs and his homework, became only an extension of Hell. If it was God's will, what was he being punished for? What was  _Gabriel_  being punished for? 

 

Elijah sighed, pausing at an intersection to stare vaguely around for a moment before turning left and continuing on. He didn't know why he went for walks, really; it wasn't like there was anything to look at, especially in the middle of the night. Connecticut wasn't really known for its thrills. He and Gabe had usually had to drive across the Massachusetts border to find anything close to fun - as soon as they managed to get their hands on a car, anyway. Before that, it had been walking - aimless, slow walking - just like he was doing now. He didn't have Gabe's battered old car to escape in. The Police had taken it away, along with its bloodstains. So he walked. 

 

Absent-mindedly, he stepped blindly off the dark sidewalk and crunched across the thick snow that blanketed their neighborhood park. Everything here was frozen - parents didn't let their kids out once the frosts set in. People froze to death in weather like this if they were out too long. He sat down slowly on the bottom of the ice-slick slide, running a gloved hand through his hair. Had Gabriel frozen to death in this weather? Had whatever it was that had gone through his windshield attacked him, and had he escaped? Elijah had been so sure he had escaped. He was  _Gabe_. Escape was practically his middle name. And they'd never found a body... everyone conveniently forgot  _that_. No body, no dead Gabe, right? But that was - months ago. The police said his car had been on the side of the interstate for weeks before anyone checked whose it was. 

 

He let out a shaky, heavy breath that fogged in the air, rubbing his eyes. Men didn't cry. He knew that. Wasn't this supposed to get better, easier? That's what everyone said. Time heals all wounds,  _apparently_ , but it had been six months. His birthday had passed, then Christmas, without Gabe. He breathed in slowly, and then let it out, the sound loud in the winter silence. 

 

It was almost amusing, the subtle irony of it. In any good horror story there was always a bit where the protagonist, being stalked by some nameless terror, would feel as if he were being watched. Real life never worked the way it did in books and movies, though. It was a lesson Gabe had learned early, but it never failed to amaze him when yet another romanticized facet of life had its gilded facade chipped and rubbed away. Never mind, he'd get over it. But he had half hoped that in all this time he'd been watching Eli that at least once his brother might have noticed, felt something; rubbed at the nape of his neck where skin prickled or hunched shoulder blades from the sensation of eyes upon his back...hell, even glanced out the window for no good reason other than to satisfy the sudden and unexplained urge to make sure there wasn't someone out there looking in.  
  
But no. Eli seemed trapped in his own little world, wrapped up and muffled in a silent sort of misery that Gabe was beginning to find hard to watch. Make no mistake, it was flattering, if he was honest. Watching someone mourn you. Flattering in a sick sort of way, but flattering nonetheless. Especially if you'd gone your whole life thoroughly convinced there wasn't a single soul on earth who'd even notice if you just up and died one day.   
  
But Eli noticed... And not just noticed, the kid seemed to mourn. It was a strange sort of sensation, watching that. Like a warm, dull ache just behind his ribcage, filling up a hollow Gabe really wanted to deny was even there. As much as he liked it, that dull ache was beginning to grow, and the more miserable Eli looked, the less enjoyable it became, turning from less of a warm glow into more of a stinging burn.   
  
Maybe that was why he failed to repress the first impulse that seized him as he listened to Eli's breath rattle in a heavy, stuttered sigh and watched him rub at his eyes. They'd been kids together, and he knew all those little tells of distress the way he knew the back of his own hands. The urge to comfort was automatic and strong. He'd broken off from the dark under the grove of trees across the street and crossed silently into the park, keeping just out of the periphery of vision.   
  
There was the crunch of frost bitten grass under sneakers and the slide shook slightly as he clambered up its ladder. Up above Eli, he was just a faceless, dark shape against the sky, hood pulled up, bare hands grasping the sticky chill of metal handles as he leaned over the top of the slide and shifted weight, ready to swing legs forward.  
  
"Hey, watch out!" He barely gave Eli enough time to jump up, and maybe the kid didn't quite make it? Either way Gabe was on his way down the slide, and whether he collided solidly with the barrier of his brother at the end of it, or if he slid neatly to a stop and glanced up at the other boy, the result was the same. The shine of familiar pale grey eyes narrowed slightly with the lopsided arch of smile Eli would have recognized anywhere.  
  
"Hey. Miss me?"  
  
---  
  
 

Years ago, Eli would have been cautious and paranoid about being out at one in the morning in the middle of winter. He and Gabe had spent endless hours in their early adolescence lurking in various community parks in the middle of the night; there was nothing better to do in the middle of suburbia on a school night, and that had been before either of them could drive. And freezing their balls off by hanging around outside still sure as hell beat hanging around the house. 

 

But endless horror films had conditioned Eli, like they had most  _sane people_  in his opinion (and Gabe hadn't met this standard), and so of the two of them he had usually been the one glancing around occasionally. Just in case police showed up, or a bored housewife with a knife descended on them (which seemed like the most likely beginning to any horror story based in their town, which was full of picture perfect families that, he figured, _had_ to lead to some kind of psychosis). 

 

These days, though, horror films seemed trite and blasé. Maybe Gabe's murderer was something out of a horror film, and they - whoever or whatever they were - would find him alone in a park and at night and kill him. But he didn't think so. And besides, who cared? Nothing really _existed_  any more. Just his green sneakers and the snow that piled up around them. The cold was irrelevant, whatever happened around him was irrelevant. 

 

And then the slide underneath him shook slightly, the subtle vibration of movement, and the thin layer of ice he sat on squeaked as it threatened to crack. He stiffened, frowning at the snow in confusion. It glittered on. Was he having some kind of grief-induced hallucination? People had those. He'd read about them. But wouldn't the fact that he knew about them mean -- "Aagh!" He yelped, body quick in its fight-or-flight instinct even if his mind was busy psychoanalysing himself. At the familiar yell behind him, he scrambled to his feet and took two staggering steps away from the slide, just in time for his brother's long legs and sneakered feet to make their own holes in the snow where he'd just been sitting. 

 

There was a long moment of fraught silence as Gabe came to a halt, and Elijah stared at the familiar crooked grin like a deer caught in headlights - and then he was launching himself forward again with a strangled cry, banging his knee painfully on the side of the slide as he threw his arms around Gabriel's neck. His momentum shoved his brother back against the slide, and the two of them ended up in a tangle of limbs, half hanging over the end of the slide and half caged awkwardly by the edges.

 

"Where the  _hell_  have you  _been_?" He burst out, and closed his eyes, throat aching, limbs twisted a little painfully around Gabe. He pulled away slightly to glare at his brother, some of his wits returning. "It's been months, we thought you were  _dead_. Gabe, we had a  _funeral_!"

 

"Ha!" Gabe barked an explosive little laugh as Elijah came crashing forward, breath knocking out of him with the sound, arms open to catch the other boy as they both tumbled back against the slide. He was grinning like a maniac as he shoved his face into the warm hollow between Eli's neck and shoulder, face cold against the other boy's skin just under the collar if his coat. Arms wound crushingly tight around his brother as he hugged back, perfectly content, breathing in the familiar scent of him as he pushed his cold nose a bit closer.  
  
He smelled GOOD, really good... In ways that Gabriel hadn't be able to appreciate before. He shoved that thought to the back of his mind, however, as Eli pulled back a bit to glower down at him. That cockeyed smile returned to shine back up at him.  
  
"Well I guess I've been dead!" He joked flippantly, one shoulder slipping against the slide in a shrug.  
  
"Yeah I know, I saw it. Very touching. Amazing that Laura even managed to get through the whole thing without jumping up and down for joy."   
  
There wasn't much bitterness there in his tone, really. More matter of fact, dry humour. The way Gabe dealt with everything. Make a joke of it and you could almost get away with telling the harsh truth ninety percent of the time. His features softened a bit as arms re-tightened around Eli in a brief squeeze.  
  
"Not you, though, huh?" There was a painful level of gratitude there, and genuine affection. Rare stuff from Gabe, and it looked good on him. He dropped his gaze, hands releasing their tight grasp of the back if Eli's coat to relax into a slow, wide spread against the small of his brother's back.   
  
"I missed ya too, Eli. I'm sorry if you worried. I didn't have much of a choice." That wicked slant of a grin returned as he drew one knee up, resting the heel of his sneaker against the edge of the slide. Eli's weight was warm and solid against him, a starch contrast to the bitter ice of the slide at his back. "But hey, it had its benefits. Guess I'm free now, huh? No more pressure to make college plans, no need to keep disappointing your parents, no social services to try to drag me off to another house, or try to have me kept a ward of the state and goose stepping to whatever tune they tell me to march to."

 

Eli's expression turned stormy the more Gabriel spoke, a well of deep hurt and confusion settling in his chest to neatly replace the crushing grief that had been there until only a few moments before. Gabe had always been flippant, sarcastic and generally unconcerned at what others thought and felt - but this was something else entirely. Eli had grieved. He'd lost his freaking  _mind_  grieving for his "dead" brother and Gabriel had - what, watched it all? And took his sweet time showing his face? 

 

He leaned a little further back, wriggling until he wasn't pressed from against Gabe from shoulder to hip, and was instead sitting up and looking down at his apparently unconcerned brother lounging against the slide like it was a chaise lounge. He frowned harshly, brow furrowed in confusion. 

 

"What do you mean,  _you saw_?" He hissed, and images of Gabe disguising himself and smirking through the event that had more or less destroyed his life came flashing before his eyes. He swallowed thickly around the rising lump in his throat, unsure whether he wanted to vomit or knee Gabriel soundly in the junk. 

 

He leaned back, gloved hands wrapped around the lip of the slide so he could push himself up to stand. Having Gabriel back was - was priceless, was everything he'd wanted for more than half a year. And yet in every fantasy, every daydream that his brother came back,  _never_  had it occurred to him that he might have stayed away  _intentionally_. "Are you telling me you have just been hanging around watching us all grieve for you for  _months?_ So you could be "free" from our parents?"

 

"What, no...well, not really." He protested as he pushed himself up onto elbows as Eli backed off and then rose, looking ten times more hurt and upset then he just had a moment ago when he still thought Gabe was dead. Dammit, this had been a shit plan. He shouldn't have just rushed in, he always fucked this up this way. He shoved himself up and grabbed for Eli's wrist, trying to pull him back a bit... Or keep him close at least. Any trace of a smirk carefully wiped itself clean of features as he turned pale eyes up at his brother.  
  
"No, Eli it wasn't like that. I didn't plan this, ok. Something happened, and I couldn't come back. Not for a while. I mean I saw it in the papers, I wasn't like, lurking behind a tree or something watching you guys bury whatever the fuck was in that box." He pulled the glove off the hand whose wrist he held, wrapped Eli's fingers into a loose fist between both sets of his own. "I coulda gone anywhere, afterwards. But I wanted to come back here, to see you. I just can't be a part of this town any more, or of your family. But I really wanted to see you again. I thought it'd be easier if you just thought I was gone, but..."  
  
One corner of his mouth curled upward in gentle regret, and perhaps a little gratitude. He pulled Eli's fist forward, rested his chin on its knuckles, the sheen of eyes still turned upward. Wait, human eyes didn't have a sheen, did they? Nah it was probably just the street lights playing weird tricks.

  
  
"But I don't wanna say goodbye to you, Eli."

 

Elijah watched him stonily for a long moment, one knee still on the edge of the slide and the other leg half turned away, as if he couldn't quite choose which direction to go in. Predictably, he was more confused than ever; so Gabe had only read his own obituary in the paper, and that made it  _okay_  to stay away? (Answer: No. No it did not.) Was this some kind of sick joke? Or maybe he was dreaming - or maybe he was having a very elaborate hallucination - or maybe he was asleep in the snow somewhere, slowly dying, and dreaming was how his body was dealing with the shock. He licked his lips slowly, brown gaze flicking once between the compelling, almost otherworldy glitter of Gabe's eyes and the pale hands wrapped around his. 

 

What did 'something happened' mean, anyway? Had he got in some trouble in New York? Had he even made it to New York? Slowly, Eli sunk down where he stood, knees under him, to sit and look up at Gabe, his expression guarded. He  _wanted_  to take his brother's word for it - wanted to _understand_ , for everything to go back to how it was. But how could it? He wouldn't come home. He'd - well, he'd  _lied,_ although that seemed too simple a description for what Gabe had done. 

 

"So you faked your own death?" He said finally, with a somewhat failed attempt to keep the  accusation out of his voice. Christians don't judge, he said silently. God judged. God judged... 

 

He sat up a little straighter, frown back on his face, as a thought occurred to him. "What was the blood in your car? Where do you live? You must have had someone - someone -  _helping_  you." And boy, did  _that_  sting. Someone  _else_  got to drive into the sunset with Gabe and he didn't even get to _know_? "Your car was on the side of the interstate in the middle of  _nowhere_."

 

"No..."  He protested, releasing Elijah's hand as the other boy knelt down.  He glanced down, lower lip pulling in as teeth worried at it for a moment before he glanced back up, one hand rising to rub at the back of his neck.  The heat from hanging onto Eli's bare hand still lingered against his fingers.

 

"I didn't fake it, Eli.  I died."  He let that stone sink to the bottom as he watched his brother from under drawn brows.  "I was dead, I  _am_  dead."

As if anticipating Eli's dubious reaction, Gabe rolled pale eyes and lifted his chin, reaching to grab at the zipper of his coat and yank it down a few inches, doing the same with the hoodie underneath before grabbing Eli's hand and pushing it inside, against the thin fabric of the t-shirt across his chest.  There was no pocket of warmth within the confines of his clothes, and more importantly, a distinct lack of the solid  _thud-thud, thud-thud_  of a heartbeat resonating against Eli's palm.  

 

Gabe fumbled with an apologetic little smile, fingertips trailing off the back of Eli's hand and down the top curve of his wrist before falling away.

 

"I wouldn't say I had someone 'helping' me, but... I mean I guess if you wanna talk in terms of guardian angels?  Yeah maybe.  But it’s not the kinda stuff your parents are always harping on about.  Not at all."

 

He shrugged, entirely too nonchalant for that whole mess of an atom bomb he just dropped.  Hands spread out against the tops of his own thighs as he forced a broad smile and held it.  The expression was pure, familiar Gabe-cheese...eyes squinting up as the apples of cheeks rose, dimples appearing out of nowhere and deepening impossibly.  Only one little, tiny detail stood out, like one of those 'find the difference in these photo' games.  

 

Where the gentle point of canines ought to be alongside the glistening white row of teeth, were long, tapering, sharp  twin needles of ivory.  Gabe let the forced smile fade away, dissolving into a kind of  concerned wariness and distrust that Elijah probably hadn't seen since that very first day his parents had brought the other boy home.  He'd been solitary and serious, as balefully cautious as a wild animal.  He'd warmed up to Eli long before he let anyone else in, but everything about the look on Gabe's face right at that moment pushed them both back so many years ago.  

 

Alone in the world and too damn scared and proud for his own good.  

 

"The blood in the car was mine, Eli.  Be glad they didn't find the rest of it all."

 

Elijah stared at his hand in the unzipped vee of Gabe's hoodie for a long moment, his expression blank as he took in - or attempted to take in - all that his brother said. At first, it was all just words; Gabe said he'd died, and that was obviously some kind of metaphor for his life ending or - something - he was sure. He had some kind of guardian angel. Some kind of benefactor, he figured, or whoever had helped him get away. 

 

That was all fine. Maybe Gabe was more depressed than he'd realised; maybe he'd had some kind of psychotic break. Or maybe he'd just done some things without thinking.  _That_  was definitely textbook Gabe. That was ok. They could get through it. Gabe would just have to wait until May, when he would be going to New York - or not wait, he didn't  _have_  to wait. Eli wouldn't make him wait, and he probably wouldn't, anyway. But maybe when he was in New York they could just go on like nothing had happened. 

 

And then Gabe was smiling - or an approximation of a smile - and for a moment Eli's thoughts were derailed, and he moved to let his hand drift away from his brother's chest.... and he froze. Every survival instinct belatedly kicked in at the same time, and his shoulders stiffened, the hand pressed to Gabe's chest began to shake slightly, and the needle-thin points of his brother's teeth seemed to grow to mythic proportions. Everything in his periphery simultaneously sharpened and blurred with adrenaline. Frantically, Eli tried to remember if he was wearing his crucifix, and renewed grief for his brother rose in his throat. 

 

"Demon," he choked out, the continued silence under his hand seeming to mock him for his own stupidity. When he could force his arm to move, he tore his hand out of Gabe's jacket and threw himself backwards, snow flying everywhere as he put a few feet of pathetic distance between him and the creature that had been his brother. His eyes darted around, seeking a way to escape while trying to keep Gabe in his sight. "You're a demon, you're - what are you? What did you do to Gabriel?!"

 

Gabe should have probably known better, but really what  _good_  way was there to go about breaking it to your brother that, hey!  Yeah I'm fucking Dracula now, haha, no really it’s a funny story...

 

He knew he'd fucked up, however, the second Eli's hand started shaking.  He could practically hear the other boy's heartbeat going erratic, skipping about like it was about to short out completely.  Still... Elijah could have backhanded his brother clean across the face and earned less of a pained reaction then he got as he stumbled backward. 

 

Gabriel looked skewered through, betrayal and shock writ across him clear as if it had been ink upon the page, face only barely kept from crumpling by the slow welling of anger seeping up under its surface, darkening gradually like a bruise.

 

"What.  The fuck.  Are you talking about?"  The words clipped out, bitten in half by those sharp teeth that had set Eli off his goddamned rocker.  "Elijah, no... I'm not...oh my god, stop it."

 

Gabe planted feet in the snow and rose slowly, hands up and open, cautious, though perhaps moreso for his own safety then that of his panicking sibling.

 

"I didn't  _do_  anything.  I died.  Something brought me back...well, someone brought me back."  His head rocked to one side with the lift of a callous little shrug,   "And it sure as fuck wasn't the devil, you twat.  Come on!"  He added, quickly, dark brows drawing down.

_"Eli, I'm Gabriel._ "  He gradually lowered the hands he held up, moving slow, reaching to tug back up the zippers of hoodie and coat before shoving them into the depths of pockets.  No one did sullen like Gabe, no one.  It was painful to watch the way shoulders hunched defensively and how eyes trained themselves on the ground as if he'd glare a hole clean through the snow-covered ground while the corners of his mouth tightened.  

 

"Shoulda known.  I shoulda  _fucking_  known.  You're a brainwashed little sheep, just like the rest of 'em.  I always thought you were just kind of playing along... so you had it easy, so they would just leave you alone.  I mean, I didn't blame you.  At least it kept them off your back...but I always thought you were just playing, not that you actually bought into all that bible thumping bullshit your parents tried to cram down every orifice they could think of."

He chuckled bitterly to himself, and the lift of cold, grey eyes was nothing shy of contemptuous the next time they fixed on Eli.

 

"Not that that's all that many, I'm sure. Puritanical prudes."

 

It was amazing what a face could do. Here Eli was, sprawled in the snow and staring up at his undead brother - former brother - the demonic creature that was using his brother as a  _coat_ , and yet despite all that - despite that he knew,  _knew_ intellectually that this was not his brother - a sharp stab of hurt lanced through his chest at Gabe's words, and he had to bite down harshly on the inside of his cheek to quell a decided unmanly reaction. 

 

"Nice try," He snarled, the hurt lending itself well to burning anger. Is this how the angels felt when Lucifer had fallen? Shakily, Elijah stood up, careful to keep his distance but now more concerned with glaring at the familiar, stolen face before him than with escape. "But your acting is a little off. Should have talked to him more before you  _stole his face_ , because my brother wouldn't speak like that. Not to me."

 

A little nervously, he licked his lips and glanced behind him. He could make a run for it, but demons probably weren't limited by physics and he didn't much fancy being murdered in the face. Maybe he could keep arguing until sunrise - could things from hell exist in the day? Fuck, the scripture was so limited on some subjects. He looked at Gabe sharply, an edge of fear coloring his expression of contempt. "What do you want, anyway? I won't become one of you. Gabe probably told you that. Not a fucking chance."

 

"Oh really?  Because up until five seconds ago, I would have said the same thing about you - that my brother would have never spoken that way to me.  Guess I was wrong, wasn't I?  Not as wrong as you though."  Gabriel spat back at him, though he seemed to instantly suffer a pang of regret, the sheen of eyes extinguished as lids squeezed shut tightly, dark lashes like smudges of tire dirt on snow against the pallor of his face.

 

"Eli, please stop.  I don't want to make you what I am.  I don't even know if I want to be what I am.  I just came here because I missed you.  I wanted to see you.  I didn't want you to see me because..." One hand pulled itself from the haven of its pocket and gestured futilely within the empty space that lay between the pair of them.  "But you were so sad.  And I'm... so sorry."

 

"If it makes you feel better you can throw salt at me, we...we can go down to the church and you can try to drown me in the holy water.  You can cover me in crucifixes and read the book of Revelations until you're blue in the face.  Or if you really want, I'll just...I'll leave.  You can pretend I'm dead again and everything will be ok."

 

Elijah simply frowned at his brother for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. Damn it all, he was - okay, that sounded like Gabe. Foot in mouth followed by regret. He exhaled heavily, breath fogging, and eyed him suspiciously.  _Could_  this be something different, something - dare he say it - rational? There was nothingto say that demons didn't turn from the devil just as angels sometimes turned from God. Perhaps Gabe was like the morning star in reverse. Maybe he balanced the scales that Lucifer tipped in the beginning. Gabriel meant 'God is my strength'. 

 

If Lucifer could fall, surely other creatures could.... rise? 

 

Perhaps the second coming of Jesus involved the return of other things, as well?

 

"Here," Elijah said absently, and his expression cleared as he unclasped the small crucifix from around his neck and tossed it the short distance between him and Gabe. If he was unholy, and unnatural, then surely the cross would affect him? It would burn, or repel him. Or perhaps it wouldn't. Any number of Godless people still wore crosses - it was the irony of the Church, the great distinction between God himself and the Church as an organisation. But if Gabe was another creature entirely, was a demonic thing, surely.... 

 

Gabe reached out automatically as the crucifix was tossed his way, palm open, catching the thing easily.  Fingers closed round the small gold thing, chain left dangling between his fingers, and eyes shot from his closed fist toward Eli's face and back again for a tense, silent moment...

 

" _Auuunnggh_!"  He doubled over, grasping at the wrist of the hand that held the cross, back hunched, dark hair falling across his face as he trembled, shoulders shaking in silence.... before the laughter came.  That quiet stuttered laughter of Gabe's, almost too shy to show its face or make itself known.  Like the second it became audible someone would find a reason to destroy it, so it tried its damnedest to keep hidden.

 

He straightened himself, grinning so that those deep dimples showed themselves even in the dim light, deeper shadows against the dark, and, still struggling with that stifled laughter, reached back to clasp the crucifix around his own neck, tucking it just against the hollow dip of his collarbone.  

 

Eli couldn't help but gasp as Gabe doubled over, his eyes widening in horror and dawning realisation. His test had failed? He stumbled backwards, heart hammering. He'd been so  _stupid!_  He'd been so easily fooled, he'd barely stuck by his faith for two seconds before he was letting Gabe in, and Gabe was burned by the crucifix and that meant he was a soulless demon and Elijah had no protection, he was going to have to --

 

A quiet laughter broke the silence, and his whirling mind ground to a halt. Uncertain, he stopped moving. Gabe was... laughing? Was he unhinged? Was he about to turn into some kind of evil maniac, laughing as he killed? Oh God, this was going to end up a horror movie and he was going to become a soulless buttmonkey demon and... oh. 

 

Calmly, Gabe fastened the crucifix around his neck, and Eli's panicked look transformed into one of outrage. "You  _asshole_!" He yelled, and stomped forward the few steps to shove Gabe with all his strength. "What the  _fuck,_ you jerk, do you want me to have a goddamned coronary?!"

 

"Well yeah, it would have kinda served you right!"  Gabe chuckled, staggering back a bit as Eli shoved at him, reaching out to grab at his brother's coat sleeves, cold fingers finding a good grasp upon the fabric just below elbows, tugging him along a bit before he righted himself.  

 

"I'm me, Eli, I swear, I promise.  Hand to god!"  He released the grip of his right hand and raise it, broad palmed, trying for sincere earnestness but failing miserably with the advent of that sweet, cockeyed grin.  Fingers bent and he hesitated a moment before he let them fall forward, grazing knuckles against Elijah's cheek before using his grip to pull him in again, folding him up tightly in that comfortable grip of a hug.

 

There was something to be said for Gabriel's hugs.  They swallowed everything whole, there was a perfect comfort in them, always had been.  Like while you existed within the orbit of them, all the awful just bled away, and nothing horrible would break that barrier.  Then again, it was very, very much like being a star circling the outer edge of that black hole that was pulling away all the terrible things, and you were just whizzing faster and faster round, forgetting which way was up with the pull of his gravity.

 

Gabriel's chin felt a bit rough, soft stubble marring its surface as it nudged against Eli's ear.  

 

"Look, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

 

Eli huffed and considered struggling as he was pulled forward, still glaring fiercely at his jerk of a brother who evidently delighted in pissing him off. At least, he kept glaring until Gabe was suddenly very, very close, and then his eyes widened as he was enveloped in his brother's arms. 

 

He shivered, expression clearing despite his attempt to keep glaring. He grumbled quietly, sighing irritably before he relaxed into the hug, fingers twisting in the back of Gabriel's coat.

 

"We're still going to church," he mumbled sullenly, voice muffled by his brother's shoulder. Closing his eyes, he let the overpowering relief flood him, relief that he had so far been denied in the however long it had been since his brother had returned to him. 

 

After a minute, he slowly pulled away, looking at Gabe uncertainly for a moment before he glanced toward the road, his brow furrowed.

 

"Come on. Maybe the good Father still leaves the cellar door unlocked at night."

 

"Ha, yeah ok, if you insist."  Having Eli relax a bit was infinitely encouraging, and Gabe was simply happy to feel the way the fabric at the small of his back tightened as his brother gripped at it.  He turned, and the embrace became one arm slung loose around Eli's shoulders as he began to steer them both out of the playground and toward the street.

 

"Shall we sing 'Ave Maria' on our way?  No no no...I know!  'He's Got the Whole World in His Hands'!  Yeah, let's sing that one."  The song was the bane of both of their combined existence from the ages of 8 through 13.  Even the mere mention could send shudders down the spine.  And even though he took a deep breath as if threatening to sing it, Gabe couldn't bring himself to actually do it, instead settling for a broken, awful rendition of 'On Eagles Wings' that would have made even the most stalwart angel plug his ears.  Thankfully, though, he was relatively quiet about it as they made their way down the sidewalk and through yards.

 

He managed to time it right, however, ending on a painfully broken pitch just at the church garden, unslinging his arm from round his brother to head for the basement storm door, dropping to a crouch to grab the old iron handle and depress its latch.  One solid tug and the door gave way as he glanced up over his shoulder at Eli, mouth shaped to an exaggerated 'O' of mock surprise that was infuriatingly endearing.  He rose from his crouch to pull the door all the way open and grinning winsomely at his sibling.

 

"After you?"

 

Eli quietly let himself be steered, the expression on his face remarkably similar to someone who was discovered sour candy for the first time. Well, at the very least, it was  _definitely_  Gabe beside him, as opposed to a demon who was pretending to be Gabe: no one could be that annoying and charming at the same time. Or that tone deaf. 

 

"You're the worst," He informed his brother tartly as the door cracked open, and he glanced once around them before shaking snow off his winter boots and descending into the pitch darkness. The last time they'd been to the cathedral after hours had ended in a very severe grounding for the both of them, a result of Elijah knocking over several candelabras at once and causing a racket that woke the people who lived across the street. That had been almost six months before Gabe had - left. Disappeared, whatever. They hadn't gone back; his mom had been anal retentive in checking their beds several times in the night, and most adventures had been on hold since. 

 

She'd had no reason to check his bed after Gabe died.  _Her_  son didn't get up to juvenile nonsense; Gabe was always the ringleader in whatever mischief they got up to. Or so she thought, anyway. Elijah had been sneaking out most nights since then to wander the town. 

 

"I can't see anything down here," He whisper-shouted up the stairs as his boots touched the cement floor of the church basement. He looked up to where Gabe was a silhouette in the light of the stormdoor and frowned. "Close the door before you turn on the light, though. Getting caught breaking and entering with my dead brother will probably not look good on my record when I get to Columbia. Oh - I got in, by the way. You probably missed that."

 

"I did miss that...I'm sorry."  The words came out of the pitch black - Gabe didn't need Eli telling him how to break and enter thankyouverymuch, he had the door shut behind them both by the time Eli turned back to offer directions as to how not to get caught.  Never mind he was the reason they got caught last time. Gabe didn't reach for a light switch, however.  He pulled the lighter out of his pocket instead and thumbed down against the flint, striking a flickering light against the pitch dark. 

 

They'd both been altar boys long enough to know their way through the basement and up through the annexes and into the sanctuary.  Gabe paused long enough in the annex to grab a large, green tinged bottle and then follow Eli's lead out into the church proper.  He took his time, lighting candles here and there, filling the massive space with a soft, dull, flickering incandescence instead of the harsh and obvious illumination that turning on the lights would have offered.

 

When he'd lit enough candles that he was satisfied that Eli could see but that no one outside would notice, he released the flint of the lighter and shoved the hot thing back into his pocket, silently wincing at the way the searing thing burned at his thumb.

 

"Ok, now what?  Want me to deny him three times?"

 

Eli stood uselessly in the aisle as Gabe flitted around, the light slowly growing until vague outlines became warm and eerie, and he could see his brother clearly. He moved slowly to the front pews, where his family usually sat, and slipped into his usual seat. How to prove Gabe's goodness? There was any number of things he could do. He could baptise his brother, they could take communion, pray together.... the last time they had been here, they had had a movie night with Gabe's laptop. Or half of one, anyway, before they were carted home by irate neighbours. 

 

"Maybe," He said uncertainly, and then stood up again, walking quickly to the back of the church to retrieve a dish of holy water that rested on one of the twin pedestals lining the aisle. He walked back a little slower, unsure whether he was really qualified to be deciding Gabe's godliness. Should he have just called the priest? Shit. He held the dish up between himself and Gabe, hesitantly dipping two fingers into it and making the sign of the cross.

 

 "Maybe we should take communion. Although, uh, I'm not sure it's anything but crackers and wine without a priest."

 

Gabe lent against the pew across from where Eli sat, the leather of his jacket creaking softly as he crossed arms.  He'd always silently found it amusing, how Eli's family took such pride (oh what a sin) in claiming seating in the front row - when their own ridiculous book said itself "Let those in the back come forward first."  It was one of those delicious ironies that had sustained him throughout adolescence.  One of the anachronistic things in life that made it worth the living.

 

The dull sheen of eyes followed his brother as he rose again and made his way down the length of the isle to grab the holy water and return again, rising from his lean to meet him and dip two fingers in as well, mimicking his sign of the cross.  He drew a long suffering breath at Eli's suggestion, and if it weren't for the deep affection that ran between them both he might have found his way toward being a great deal crueler in his response.

 

"No, it’s nothing without the transubstantiation."  He affirmed.  There were so many, many people who thought Gabriel was a waste of oxygen.  Some kind of ignorant, useless throw-away good for grinding away under a blue collar, menial job, drinking and losing his teeth and rotting away while he wasted what precious life their sweet god had been so blindly merciful to grant him, poor moron.  But Gabriel was so, so smart.  Painfully so. 

 

He nodded behind himself toward the tabernacle, small golden little hut with its twin swinging doors just beyond the altar.

 

"The leftovers from Sunday are in there, if you want them.  I don't know how much more proof you want, though Eli.  I'm wearing your cross, standing in your church."  The holy water still damp on his forehead as he tried to be gentle with his smile.  It never worked, it was such a savage thing, even in its infancy.  

 

"I died, Eli.  And I'm going to tell you first hand that I never saw a god.  There was no bright light and nothing waiting for me.  There was nothing....and then there wasn't nothing, again.  If god exists, I didn't meet him.  Or he wanted nothing to do with me."

 

Gabriel drew a breath and all that was bittersweet in him condensed for a second.  The long muscles of his throat above the part of his hoodie worked in a dry swallow as he looked away, preoccupied with the warm flicker of the candlelight.  What if he had bought it for a moment?  All that thoughtless braying and preaching and song?  What if for a fraction of a second Gabriel had let himself indulge in the comfort of belief?  

 

And then what if he died?  And found out even that little lapse in cynicism was slapped away by the universe the same way any shape of his softness or need had ever been.

 

The soft of his lower lip pulled in between teeth and there was a crumbling half a second when even the Son of the Morning might have taken a bit of pause.  A moment later, however, that carefree, charming mask was back in place and Gabe was lifting a stoppered bottle between thumb and forefinger, wiggling it helpfully as he held it forward.

 

"Give it up, Eli.  I'm not the devil, in spite of what your parents always said."

 

Eli looked at his brother sourly for a moment after he finished speaking, affronted at the tone in Gabe's voice. It wasn't like this was  _easy_  for him - it wasn't like  _he_  was the one who had disappeared and then wandered back and been annoyed that trust was broken.

"So sorry this is so difficult for you," Eli said blandly, and turned to move back towards the rear of the church, setting the holy water dish down with a little more force than necessary when he reached the last pew. 

 

"I mean," he continued, voice a little raised to reach Gabe as he moved back up the aisles. "It's not like this is difficult for  _me._ It's not like I've just been presented with an undead brother and expected to be totally okay with it without any explanation beyond 'well, a thing happened and now I'm dead.'" Eli said savagely, and as he reached Gabe he quickly swiped the stoppered bottle from his grip and stomped down the second pew and sat down. Jerkily, he slouched and propped his feet up on the back of the pew in front of him, thin fingers uncorking the communion wine with a thick _pop._

 

He rolled his head to the side to glare balefully at Gabe, the bottle pressed to his lips as he sipped.

 

"You can't have any, by the way, and we're fresh out of angel tears or the souls of unbaptized infants or whatever it is you drink."

 

"Oh my god, I am so sorry." The sarcasm dripped off Gabe's tone, even though his good natured grin never faltered as Eli stole the bottle from him and slumped off toward the pew. He, in turn, push up from his lean and headed for the altar directly in front if his brother, climbing the few steps up upon the dais to hoist himself up and take a seat upon the white and gold cloth-covered surface. 

  
  
"I am so thoughtless. Please- tell me what it's like to have your whole life ripped away from you in a second and turned inside out and upside down before it's handed back to you. What's it feel like to really have your plans ruined? How are you coping with being turned into some kind of freak of nature?" Gabe pressed his hand to his heart, milking his performance for all it was worth, wearing a look of perfect concerned fretting, dark brow knit over the sharp, straight blade of his nose. It was a miracle really, he'd gone this long in life without someone attempting to break it for him.

  
"I mean you can't possible go to college now, live your dreams, grow up, see the world, build all those amazing things you used to draw. You can't even go home or hold a real job anymore, right? Jesus, Eli I am so sorry I've been such an insensitive ass. Please forgive me? How can I help you? Tell me, I'll do anything." 

  
Gabe's dimples deepened as he grinned down at his sullen brother, that false, sarcastic concern melting into his usual unconscious charm. 

  
  
"I love you, Eli. You're amazing." He lent back upon elbows on the alter, lounging in obscene comfort upon god's table, feet dangling, kicking casually back and forth in a slight sway. "I AM sorry, alright? Really sorry. I don't know what you want me to do to make things right, but I'll try, ok?"

  
  
He crinkled his nose at the refusal to share the bottle of what was sure to be cheap, fortified wine. 

  
  
"Nah, you know I only like my souls of the wretched unborn on ice, with a twist." He shifted onto one elbow to pinch a finger and thumb in the air before himself, "Maybe with a splash of soda, too."

 

Elijah watched him in silence for a minute, the bottle again pressed to his lips as he drank. He wasn't sure if drinking was an attempt to forget or an attempt for things to be as they were - when the two of them would get drunk just about anywhere that didn't involve other people, and usually ended up with them smooshed together hidden under something with a bottle of whatever they could get their hands on. Which, sadly, seemed to more often than not be communion wine. He really was an awful Christian sometimes. 

 

"You're  _snarky_ as an undead hellspawn," He said drolly, mirth in his eyes, and took another sip. "Snarkier, anyway. And we are in Connecticut, you could probably find wretched unborn  _somewhere_  around here."

 

It wasn't that he was feeling particularly jokey about Gabe's - uh -  _condition_. Joking about his brother being hellspawn didn't exactly give him the warm and fuzzies or make him want to laugh. But he didn't really feel like it was real, yet, either; it was like the two of them were acting out some kind of Shakespearean arc. Long lost brother turns out to be a child of Satan! Hilarity ensues. 

 

If he thought about it for long enough, really thought about it, it would become real. So he didn't think about it; he joked. And got drunk, apparently, because everything was starting to look a little fuzzy around the edges, and his mouth was stretched in a lazy smile for no reason. Well. 

 

"Anyway," He said, as if he'd been speaking and not smiling into the middle distance for the last minute. "My point in all that - thing - before - was that I'm going on more or less no information here. I don't even know what you  _are_. You could be some obscure thing demon that feeds on, I don't know, feet or something. Or a sex demon who feeds on... sex." Okay, that train of thought needed to end  _now_. He shook his head, running a hand over his face instead of smacking himself in the forehead like he wanted to.

 

"You should throw me a bone here so I stop talking."

 

"I have it on good account I was snarky as  _living_  hellspawn too.  So not much change there, huh?"  

His smile softened as Eli went on, lower lip pulling inward toward the thoughtful bite of careful teeth, brows rising slowly as he pushed himself back to sitting upright and lent forward, elbows upon knees, hands dangling between the spread of them.  They'd been drunk together enough time for him to recognize the signs of that haziness setting in.  Elijah always was a ridiculously endearing drunk... and somewhat of a lightweight.  

 

Gabe's head ducked with soft laughter at his brother's conjecture, eyes upon his hands as he fiddled absently with a ring around his one thumb. 

 

"Sorry to disappoint you, but no, I wasn't turned into some kinda anime cartoon-tentacle-demon-sex-monster, here to enslave the whole town with orgasms. ....As fun as that sounds."  He glanced up from under dark brows, still biting back the pleased wickedness that mouth of his wanted to shape itself into, and reached out to crook a finger at his exasperated brother.

 

"C'mere.  I'll show you.  I'll be easier than trying to explain, I think."

 

Elijah's eyes widened at the come-hither look his brother was giving him, the bottle poised mid-air in his hand. Well, that was....  _menacing_.  And also somehow compelling.  Which was unnerving. He swallowed, eyeing Gabriel suspiciously as he stood up, limbs heavy and languid. 

 

"'Kaaaaay," he said uncertainly, and then took his sweet time, taking another swig from the bottle and corking it slowly. It wasn't that he was  _nervous_. This was his brother for Christ's sake; what was he going to do, eat his brains?

 

 Shit, was that possible? Slowly, he edged past the front pew and meandered as casually as he could towards his brother. Gabe looked like he was going to eat him alive. Shit, shit. What was Gabe even going to show him? What could possibly be shown? Was he going to call Satan or - okay probably not Satan but was he going to summon something or grow horns and cloven hooves or something? Shit!

 

"As long as you're not the demon of bad touching. Or something gross," He frowned hazily, his eyes half-lidded, and paused uncertainly just before his brother. God, what if he was the demon of vomit or teenage pregnancy or something? Jesus Christ.  Or - oh, god.

 

"You said tentacles!  _You don't have tentacles do you?_!"

 

Gabriel looked endlessly pleased as Eli rose and began edging toward him; the very definition of the cat that got the canary.  Hands flattened upon the altar's edge as he lifted himself up and swung easily onto his feet.

 

"The demon of bad touching."  He repeated sardonically, arching a brow at his brother. "Really?  And yeah, sorry to disappoint you, but no tentacles, Eli.  Christ, this is real life, alright, not some bad comic book."

 

Strong words for someone back from the dead.  Hand held itself back out again, waiting for Eli to climb the steps up to join him, waiting for Eli to put his hand in his.  Fingers and palm were as cold as they had been outside, and Gabe gave Eli a moment to adjust to the idea of them before using that tether to draw him closer, haul him in the way one did with a fish on the line that hadn't yet realized how close to the surface it was getting, hadn't yet begun to fight.  Gabe pulled him up beside him, close enough to put them toe-to-toe before he turned, and Elijah would find the small of his back bumping up against the edge of the altar as Gabe turned the hand still in his over, and reached with his other hand to slide the cuff of Eli's coat down, away from his wrist.

 

The gunmetal grey of eyes watched his brother's face carefully, unflinchingly as he drew the hand he held upward and dipped his head to meet it.  Mouth opened and there were those fangs again.  Long, milk-white things that became a shade of translucent toward the razor tip of them, and glistening wet like the rest of the more harmless pearls alongside them.  They might have been terrifying things, but they were  _alluring_.  You wanted to run the bad of your thumb under them and see if they pricked like thorns.  And they did, as they sunk into the outer edge of Elijah's palm, needle sharp things encountering barely any resistance as skin gave like butter.

The pain only lasted a fraction of a second though, searing little sting that melded flawlessly into a sudden hot rush.  Just a little thing, really, but  _oh._ If we were made of the stuff of stars, this was like having some of that dust of the universe suddenly condense in his belly and supernova, a rush of heat and bliss flooding outward into limbs, licking at the edges of his brain.  Elijah was a good, god-fearing boy...but surely he'd put hands upon himself once or twice?  This was smaller than that release...but so much more deliciously intense.  By the time it faded into little more than a warm, boneless tingle burning itself out along all the raised, fine vellus hairs of his skin, Gabriel was dragging his tongue across the two small puncture wounds, vivid red staining the gloss-slick, pale pink of it, all his attention trained upon the way red welled back up in tense little bubbles against his brother's flesh.  

It took effort to force his eyes back up, lift his head to offer Elijah a thin smile, still sucking the taste of him off his lower lip.

 

Elijah had almost stumbled up the stairs, so blindly drawn was he to Gabe, who was watching him with a leer that made blood rush into his cheeks and the heavy, syrupy feel of his limbs intensify. If he'd been paying attention - if conscious thought had been a strong point at that moment - he might have laughed at the situation; how he felt like he was in a porno, how he was being pulled across the room as if Gabe was the Phantom of the Opera and maybe he should start shrieking about angels of music. As it was, his mind was cheerfully blank, aside from a cold edge of fear that told him this was going to change things, was going to change  _him_  somehow, and - to a lesser extent - this wasn't all that  _brotherly_. 

 

It never really was, though, with them. Hadn't been for years.  They hadn't been  _just_  brothers in some time.  Partners in crime, yes. Family, yes.  But that wasn't all. 

 

"Hey," he said vaguely, his voice a little breathless as he closed the gap between them. "I've never had total proof that you didn't have tentacles _before_  you were dead. I saw you all tenacle-y wrapped around a few girls last year," he continued, and frowned a little, but then Gabe's hand was wrapped around his and he swallowed a little nervously, eyes on the path their joined hands - his pale, and Gabriel's somehow paler - made, shifting a little as his arm stretched. 

 

And then there they were - those twin points behind Gabe's lips, menacing in the half-light and colored a pale gold in the candlelight. His hand in Gabriel's trembled a little as it closed the distance, and there was the brief cold touch of lips before - heat. Elijah felt his skin part, almost gentle, and loud in the night silence he inhaled sharply; it was like he was drunk, more drunk, and warm - like he'd slipped into a warm bath, his blood seeming to burn and fizz like champagne. His knees felt weak, his body sagging between Gabriel's and the table at his back, and the hand not at his brother's lips clutched at the edge of the altar, either to hold him upright or to keep him sane, he wasn't sure. 

 

And as if he wasn't already overwhelmed, he could  _feel_  Gabriel drawing on his blood, could feel it as though everything in him was being pulled along his arm and out of him, as if his brother wasn't drinking his blood but sucking his cock, and his eyelids fluttered, his head heavy as it lolled back. 

 

Then Gabriel pulled back and the sensation tapered off like fireworks fizzling into nothingness, and he swallowed thickly, raising his head. Gabe was licking his lips, the corners stained with - his blood? He swallowed again, eyes dropping briefly to the punctures in his wrist, but unerringly focused again on the bloodstained lips. Vaguely, it occurred to him that he should say something, or Gabe should - someone should - but his mind didn't seem particularly forthcoming with anything. "Oh."

 

"Mmhm."  He hummed in agreement to Eli's loquacious little 'oh', reaching for his brother's lolling head, palm smooth against his cheek as he cupped the side of his face, fingertips four points of cool contact nestled against and under his ear as thumb stroked a slow line along his cheek bone.  

 

He seemed so much more lucid then Eli, frustratingly so, yet still a bit more intoxicated then he was five seconds ago.  Everything about him more relaxed, softened.  He released a breath and the way it drained out of him seemed as if perhaps it was something he'd been holding since he came hurtling down the slide earlier that evening - or perhaps even longer then that.  

 

He rocked closer, forehead coming to rest against Eli's, hips pinning the ones that had sagged back against the altar's edge.

 

"Yeah?"  Belated response to Eli's observation about him and the girls. "What, jealous?"

 

Like he couldn't help himself, everything had to be teasing, everything had to be slightly mean and defensive.  He never meant any of it though, growl worse than his bite - well - it used to be.  He inhaled slowly, dragging oxygen in like a drug in and of itself, eyelids half-masting.  

 

"You taste good..."  It tumbled out before he could stop it.

 

Eli closed his eyes at the cold touch on his face, feeling like he was very much out of his depth suddenly. His wrist throbbed, but the pain seemed to crest and trough throughout his whole body, as if the network of veins that ran through him was all one raw wound... and yet it wasn't strictly pain, either, but instead some unnamed thing between pain and pleasure, like there were sparks in his blood. 

 

"Why would I be jealous?" He said vaguely, eyes still closed and cheeks warming as every point of contact with Gabriel's cold touch seemed to burn like dry ice. Why  _would_ he be jealous? That was stupid. They were brothers. Even if he - apparently - tasted good, whatever that meant. Maybe Gabe was going to bite him again... "That's stupid."

 

And it was stupid. But then, most of this was pretty stupid; he was standing with his undead brother having sexy bites - which were probably not _meant_  to be sexy, except apparently he was a  _pervert_  - in a cathedral they had broken into. He really needed to get to confession. Jesus, what would the priest say? 

 

"Oh."  Gabe’s turn to have words fail as he pulled his face back, let his hand fall from its touch, unwilling to meet the soft brown of Eli's tipsy gaze.  The generous line of his mouth tightening as he stared down at his brother's hand that he still held between them both, running the edge of his thumb along the congealed, dried bits of blood where he'd bitten, watching them flake and fall away to reveal flawless skin underneath as if nothing had happened.

 

"Right, ok."  Something sullen, bordering on bitter tinged his tone - or perhaps it was just resignation.  "Yeah, right, why."  

 

"So you're a... vampires are real?" He whispered, and let his eyes slide open, warm brown locking with cool grey. "You drink blood, you're here at night - that means vampire, right?" His brow furrowed, a small frown coloring his expression, brain working a little faster as the warmth in his limbs receded a little. He took a deep breath, unbitten hand slipping behind him to close around the neck of the communion wine again. He had a feeling he wanted to keep drinking before he lost his mind as realisation set in. "You feed on - on people. You fed on me just then, right? Do you kill them?"

 

Gabe forced his face up and one half of his mouth tugged upward in a cold approximation of a smile that eyes failed to follow through with.  

 

"Yeah, vampire, I guess.  Seems to fit, from what I've figured out.  And yes, I can kill... I mean, I could."  The sheen of eyes grew as they widened suddenly, serious.  "But I wouldn't kill you, Eli.  I swear it."

 

Elijah almost leaned forward to follow Gabriel's withdrawing face, a frown flitting across his face before his eyes widened and he leaned back normally again, half slouched against the altar table still, arm stretched between them.

"No -," he began, and then stopped himself, pressing his lips together. 

 

"I didn't mean - obviously you aren't going to kill me or you would have. But that wasn't really a - uh - meal," which was about the least sexy way he could have described it, and he mentally cringed, but was quietly a little glad that he no longer had to be worried about getting  _too into it_ , as such. Brow furrowed, Elijah looked away for a moment - the earnest, poorly disguised expression of bitterness on Gabriel's face was very distracting - and absently eased himself up onto the table behind him, the silk a little slippery beneath him. 

 

"I mean, do you not --," He looked at Gabriel again and, yes, his mouth was distracting as well apparently -- "Uh, have you not been killing people, I mean? Have you been --," don't say it, don't admit - "Have you been doing - that - with a bunch of people, leaving a trail of... dazed victims between the state line and here?"

 

"No... I mean I've been trying not to, I  _hope_  I haven't.  It was pretty hard at first, being hungry.  Not really understanding.  But yeah I'm just kinda...working things out, I guess."

Hips still pushed hard against Eli's hips, that easing up onto the altar was...well, it was all manners of indecently pleasant.  And he was apparently in no real rush to withdraw, though he let Eli's hand go at last, and settled there against the altar, between the spread of his brother's thighs.  Hands lifted, fingers curling in the taut flexion of hesitant fists before they came down, one over each knee, shaped to the way jeans clung against skin, squeezing slightly.  

 

Elijah was tall, taller than him, and sat up on the table like he was, Gabe had to tilt his head back to look up at him as he drug palms forward, over the tops of thighs.  Chin pushed up like that, there wasn't much hiding the way the muscles of throat worked as he swallowed something hard lodging itself just behind his adam's apple.

 

"Did you like it?"

 

Elijah nodded slowly, relief flooding him at Gabriel's words. He hadn't killed anyone. Thank God. If he had been killing people.... internally he shuddered. He didn't know what he'd do if Gabe had answered differently. It didn't bear thinking about. He had so many things to be thankful for. 

 

Absently, he dragged the bottle of wine from behind him and again raised it to his lips, his movements slow and relaxed as adrenaline ebbed out of him. As the wine slipped down his throat, he felt a touch on his knees, and he pulled the bottle away and looked down in time for Gabriel's pale hands to drag heavily up his thighs. He shivered, fist clenching around the neck of the wine, and licked at his lower lip, where red drops, darker than blood, had collected from the rim of the bottle. 

 

He had opened his mouth to respond, lips parting stained red, when Gabriel spoke and his eyes widened.  _Did you like it_? He inhaled sharply.  _Yes. It was wonderful, heady, indescribable; it felt like something illicit; it made me wonder what biting felt like places other than my hand; it made me --_

 

" _What_?" He choked out, a telltale flush rising up his neck as he leaned backwards, staring at Gabriel with an approximation of incredulity. "What kind of a question is that? You're  _a dude!"_

 

The inner corners of Gabriel's dark brows twitched a bit, tension seeking exit there between the pinch and release of them at Eli's sputtering.  But as quick as that shadow crossed Gabe's face, it passed, replaced by something far closer to amusement.  

 

"Yeah?  And I asked if you liked me biting you...not my hand down your jeans.  Or your cock down my throat."  He tossed that last line in there flippantly, after a second's pause.  Like it was nothing, like he'd never thought about...

 

Hands hooked into Eli's belt-loops and it took one good, quick haul to jerk him closer to the edge of the altar, so he and Gabe had some form of contact again.  This time from crotch to sternum.  The layers of coats and clothes in between were either a godsend or a curse, depending upon your point of view.  It was no huge barrier for Gabe, however, whose fingers had released their grip to go sliding, up under the hem of Eli's jacket...and shirt to smooth coolly against the skin of his lower back, just where jeans and the elastic of underwear dipped down with the bend of sitting, where skin was warm and sensitive and never touched, not once before.

 

"Do you want me to do it again?  I'm hungry..."   He was also, apparently, shameless.

 

For a brief moment Eli grimaced in embarrassment, mentally kicking himself. Gabe hadn't been talking about - he'd just asked if it felt good, and he'd reacted like he'd been caught with his hand down his pants. God, he was an idiot. And now Gabe probably thought he was some kind of -  _wait_ , why was he talking about - hand down his...? His cock down --?! 

 

And unbidden, an image flashed before his eyes of himself on his knees, of sliding his lips up Gabriel's cock while his brother groaned, of a fast-forward montage of the two of them entwined on a bed, against a wall, on a table - on an altar table - on this altar table, right now - and Elijah was stifling a gasp as he was suddenly yanked forward against a hard body, and there was Gabriel's hips against his, his knees bracketing his brother's body, and Elijah had never been so horrified and so grateful for the rigid confinement of denim in his life. 

 

Gabriel's hands were sliding up and around him, hands cold in the warmth underneath his coat, and he trembled, his breath catching in his throat, brown eyes dark as he watched his brother lean closer. He wanted to...? No, that was surely dangerous - he'd already been bitten once, how did he know that wouldn't make him one of the undead? No, he should shove Gabe away and go home, get some sleep. He had school in a few hours. He was going to be wrecked enough as it was. And Gabriel was - this was dangerous. Gabriel might just want to sate his hunger, but if Eli felt like he did last time he was bitten - and they were too close for him not to realise that Elijah had some weird perverted reaction to being bitten... No. He'd shove him away, and go home, and maybe talk to him again after he'd fed, and had therefore ceased being so leery. 

 

"Yes," He blurted, barely a whisper. "I mean - if you have to. If you're - hungry. Better me than someone else. If you really, um, have to."

 

"Mmmn, yes."  Gabe's turn to sound a bit drunk, look a little hazy as he tipped a lopsided smile upward and withdrew one hand from under Eli's coat to reach and yank down the zipper of the obstructive thing, shove it aside slightly so it hung off one shoulder.  Then fingers were burrowing back into the delicious warmth that had been trapped inside it... only this time these were approaching from the front, lifting the hem of his brother's shirt and slipping underneath, cool touch skimming stomach and spanning his side.  Gabe pushed his face into the hollow of his brother's throat, dark lashes tickling at his jaw.  

 

"You taste best."   _All kinds of little truths slipping out, hm?_  Later, Gabriel might regret it, as was his usual.  Eli overthought everything and as a result suffered paralysis by analysis - while Gabe thought far too little and then spent all his time soaking nose-deep in regret and self-disdain later.  He wasn't lying, though.  Eli tasted like hot sunshine and bitter sweet things, like peaches  _almost_  ripe, but not quite.  Every other person (by comparison) had tasted the way diesel fuel smelled.  

He nuzzled in, the tip of his nose drawing along the line of sinew that stood out from collarbone to jaw, down the length of Eli's throat, before his mouth brushed against skin.  Not quite a kiss at first, almost shy, lips parting and touching again before it became one...no, a series of them.  Slow, ticklish, tasting things.  The kind of attention you could let go on for hours while you writhed.  Little wonder those girls in school had seemed so enamored.  

 

Elijah shivered lamely against Gabriel's lips, his head tilting back and to the side slightly so as to make it easier on his brother - just so that he could get to his food, so that it was easier, not because he was cautiously, pathetically impatient, like a second-time drug-user who knew it only went downhill from here but couldn't help but want  _more_. Gabe's lips were skirting along his skin now, as though trying to find the perfect spot, as if he was dowsing for blood, for the best place to puncture the skin - except it felt more like kisses, like some bizarre foreplay in - no, that wasn't a thought he was going to entertain, because he really, really didn't (did) want to imagine them again, doing things that weren't brotherly. 

 

"Do you always kiss your food?" He burst out, more for something to distract himself than anything, his voice coming out almost strangled and yet breathy. He licked his lips, gazing at the painted angels on the ceiling, wondering if Lucifer had perhaps fallen by becoming a vampire, and had he ever bitten one of his angel brothers, or any prophets? Perhaps he had bitten Elijah, and the whole Bible story would reform itself in preparation for the coming of days -- and the angels seemed to smile knowingly down at him, shrouded in almost total darkness above them where the candlelight didn't quite illuminate. 

 

He shivered again, and reached up to clutch at the edge of Gabriel's jacket, inhaling the scent of leather and cold. It was so familiar, and yet totally antithetical, that he was entwined on an altar cloth with his brother of all people, his blood warm, limbs aching with anticipation. He licked his lips, hands skimming to clutch instead at the thin tee-shirt next to Gabriel's skin.

 

"Shut up, Eli." Gabe murmured, nosing just under his ear, breath a cool wash against the flush of skin. He was fairly certain that Elijah would have no memory, or at least perhaps just a hazy one of the few moments before he sank teeth in, and he was willing to take a gamble on that for the moment. Hands skimmed upward, taking Eli's shirt with them as it bunched up against Gabe's forearms, leaving stomach bare as fingertips found the hollow dip of spine and stroked along it toward shoulder blades.  
  
There was one last little suckling nuzzle of a kiss, just over the hot thrum of a pulsing vein, so close to the surface of skin Gabe could feel it throb against the drag of his lower lip. The pain this time, when those needle points split skin and suck deep, was so much more intense, ivories sinking in up to the gums, all those other blunt teeth joining in the fight as they latched hard to sensitive skin, bruising and denting, tearing slightly, so much less fit for this dirty work then the fangs were. Ah but that rush was on its way, the punch of it ten thousand times more powerful than the little scraping nip at Eli's hand had been.  
  
The hot spurt of sweet copper that hit the back of Gabriel's throat felt like a condensed mouthful of heaven itself, and he allowed himself the generous luxury of actually pulling, sucking upon the fount of the wound, greedy as heat coursed over his tongue and down his throat, hitting the pit of his belly like the dull fire burn of whiskey. He could have two, maybe three of these gluttonous swallows before Eli's wellbeing might become affected, and he took full advantage of what he could get. He'd spent so long in town, and couldn't risk being seen there much less being seen by multiple people who might go talking to his parents about 'hey, I saw your dead son I think and I'm pretty sure he maybe bit me or something?' And Eli....Eli just tasted so fucking good...

Elijah only distantly heard his brother's answer, his eyes drifting closed and his other senses seemingly becoming muffled, as if he didn't quite exist at the moment, or his only purpose was to wait for the bite that was coming. Gabriel was still solid against him, and he could vaguely feel the cool touch of air and the colder touch of his fingertips tracing a path up his spine that was at the same time cold and hot, burning like frostbite. He shuddered, and his head lolled to the side and forward to rest against Gabriel's leathery shoulder, his body curling, knees tightening around his brother's hips and fingers twitching in his tee shirt, a syrupy, sweet coil warming his belly. 

 

Then there was the split second of Gabriel's sharp teeth at his neck, and he twitched, but by the time his body had reacted there had been a give, and his neck burned, and he made a pained sound against Gabriel's shoulder, inhaling sharply through his teeth, his brow furrowed - and then his brother  _pulled._ Everything in him seemed to be dragged forward, tidal waves in his veins, and his lips parted on a breathy moan. If the bite on his hand had been a sensory overload, this was a fucking atom bomb inside him - a mushroom cloud of feeling, like there was an entire world inside him, and an entire world inside Gabriel, and there was fire traveling the roads between them. 

 

Shuddering, he clutched at Gabriel, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and twisting them to quell the frantic need to move. Everything in him screamed for - something; he wasn't sure. He groaned, biting his lip, and tried to pull Gabriel closer, his nails digging into the skin of his brother's back. 

 

Gabe would have been lying if he hadn't said something in him loved it, at least a little bit, and if he were completely honest with himself it was a whole hell of a lot more then a little bit; the  _sound_  Eli made, the way the shape of him curled forward and tightened.  It'd be the biggest lie of all if he couldn't admit to himself that some part of him had entertained the fantasy of just such things - and long before this whole situation he was in became his reality. 

Sure, the circumstances were a bit different, but hell, beggars can't be choosers.

 

Elijah pulled at him and he pushed forward in kind, hands spanning his brother's ribs and shoving him back against the altar as he climbed up, setting a knee on it's edge, one of Eli's legs riding up over the bend of his thigh, tucked tight against his hip as he braced himself on flattened forearms over his brother.  Throat working on the thick bliss of another swallow.  God, and it went down like holy fire.

 

He could hear Eli's heart thudding,  _feel_  it in the core of his brain, strong and hard as a war-drum, drowning out the world.  The sweet, hot crackle of electric fire coursing through each artery and vein, down to the smallest capillary, erratic lightening hunting for its grounding, exploding thunder echoing in nerve endings and deafening everything, anything save the primal, perfect cortex, that sweet center mass with there was nothing but pleasure or pain to be had, and oh how it was dumping pleasure out in a maelstrom at the moment.  

It took every last unraveling shred of willpower Gabriel had to stop, to withdraw the crushing vice-grip of teeth and run his red-stained tongue across his brother's throat.  But he did, every line of him tense with the effort it required, and he forced his face away, turned to scrape teeth harmlessly against Eli's chin, to catch the soft edge of his lower lip against his own in a grazing, drag of a kiss as he untangled hands from the runched mess under his shirt to cradle his head instead, thumbs tender against temples.   

 

They'd knocked over the bottle of wine, and its dark red had spilled out, stained the alter along with a few spare flecks of Eli’s own offering.

 

Elijah groaned as he found himself flat against the altar, his hazy senses telling him nothing of his equilibrium other than that he was pressed between a hard surface and a warm, almost burning body that his whole being wanted to curl around, wanted to crush himself against until they were one thing. Every pull, every fragment of himself that pushed its way past Gabriel's lips felt like an increase in pressure, felt like it sealed them together, and yet it wasn't enough; impatiently, he arched his back and pulled his brother against him, his body undulating, head hitting the altar with a dull thud. 

 

Lazily, like waking up, his eyes slid just barely open, and hazily he gazed over Gabriel's shoulder towards the dark ceiling, two spots of color high on his cheeks. Languidly, his hands found their way to his brother's hips, and he was vaguely considering the fact that the press of bare skin would improve the situation greatly, and had begun to slip his hands around to the front of Gabriel's jeans -- and the flow of blood ceased, and the stinging drag of a tongue was at his throat, and Gabriel begun to pull away. He whined softly, blinking hard, and was turning his head to ask why his brother had stopped when a languorous kiss was pressed to his lips, and he hummed. He seemed to be about ten times more drunk than he'd been before, but he wasn't complaining. 

 

"Mmmmhow was your dinner?" He said hazily, eyes closed again, and slipped his arms around Gabriel's waist to cling to him some more. Elijah was always physical when he was drunk, but it was more than that; he felt strangely vulnerable, and the idea of Gabe pulling away made him feel panicky in a vague, muzzy sort of way. "All... five food groups 'n shit?"

 

"It was fucking five star.  Delightful.  Shut up and kiss me, Eli, before you start thinking again. Please."  The last was tacked on there with a quiet sense of need it was hard to fathom after being drowned under so much sweet satiation.  Gabe's nose brushed beside his brother's own, and he obligingly ground hips downward, like that link still lasted and he knew what it was Elijah was thinking, wanting.  It was no fumbling push, but a smooth, serpentine roll of hips that ground them together in ways all manner of indecent.

 

" 'M not gonna leave you again, ok?  I'm sorry... I was stupid, so fucking stupid, just...Eli, kiss me before you pass out."  

 

It must have been strange to hear such an honesty out of Gabe, who always kept his cards so close to his chest, and prided himself on keeping everyone and everything at arm's length.  The contact between them no longer felt cold at all, Gabriel's skin flushed with fever.  Under him, Eli looked a precious drunk with his burning cheeks and eyes that refused to focus for very long.  Gabe couldn't help but grin at it, and let thumbs run a gentle metronome against the hollow's of his brother's cheeks as he held his head.  He'd get him, home, put him to bed, leave him to sleep it off - and odds were if Eli didn't take a sick day he'd spend the school hours feeling more hung over and awful then he'd ever had... but he'd be alright.  Maybe for the first time in months.  Why did he wait so long, again?  He couldn't recall.

 

The words 'shut up, I'm always thinking' were halfway to Elijah's lips when Gabriel rolled his hips, and he choked on a moan, thought fleeing his brain for a moment of warm, curling pleasure. Had he been lucid - or even if he had been less effected, simply drunk on alcohol instead of the fire in his veins - he would have panicked, would have shoved Gabriel away; it had gone far beyond the subtle, half-joking flirtation that he had never consciously admitted to sharing with his brother, and the warm throb of his cock attested to that. 

 

As it was, he smoothed a hand along Gabriel's hip and hitched his bent knee a little higher, belatedly seeking out a better angle for the friction between them. When his brother asked for a kiss, he thoughtlessly obliged, his mind tangled in feeling and endorphins and several years of unresolved sexual tension, complex questions of morality nonexistent. Just a fleeting pass, a warm press of his mouth against Gabriel's, contrastingly chaste compared to the way his knee hooked around Gabe's to keep their hips joined. 

 

His eyes slid open, just barely, and he wanted to agree with his brother - wanted to say he knew he wouldn't leave, he knew he was sorry - but instead he saw the bone white line of Gabriel's cheek, his lips, the red stain there, the slightly desperate look in his pale eyes, and he kissed him again almost urgently, arms slipping up under his jacket to pull him closer.

 

Gabriel might have just been ready to protest the brevity of that first kiss, mouth parting for just that purpose when Eli came back for seconds, and this time like he meant it.  Gabe drowned himself in it, brows drawing, tucking down like it deserved every ounce of his concentration.  He was so endlessly careful about it, no uncomfortable sloppy, junior-high makeouts here.  He'd waited way too long, had way too much time to think about this, to nurse a silent craving for this  _not_  to be languorous and meticulous in how he indulged in his brother's mouth under his.  

Slow sucking, drawing lower lip in between the pinch and release of teeth, letting it drag away to claim the soft bow of his upper lip, catch it and taste it with a touch of the tip of his tongue.  A wordless shudder of breath gave him pause as Eli hitched his leg up a bit, setting contact all the closer, and even through the two layers of denim between them he could feel the hard rise of his brother's cock pushing what shallow tent it could in those tight confines.  Gabe obliged him in turn, hips rocking, picking a slow push of a rhythm, though the sensation of grinding against the crotch that rose to meet each rolling push was going to drive him halfway to mad and back again.  He dove back in, prising Elijah's mouth open under his own, licking against tongue, a slick slide of heat and wet that tasted of sweet copper pennies and sticky-sour communion wine.

 

One more enthusiastic push of hips and the fallen bottle of wine went rolling off the altar to clatter upon the floor, cracking but not shattering.  Still loud enough to startle Gabriel into jerking upward, sucking a breath in a second's panic that passed as quickly as it had come.  It gave him pause though, enough to let some of the blood rushing for his cock actually make it to his brain.  He released air in the low groan of a sigh and let his forehead drop against his brother's chest for a long moment, face buried as he scraped together what common sense he had and heaped the noxious stuff over the fire kindling within, stamping it out as best he could.

 

When he raised his face, it was to offer Elijah an apologetic, tilted little smile.  Hands still bracketing his brother's face tenderly, one thumb strayed to stroke at the wet curve of his lower lip, to press softly at the outer edge of  his mouth.  

 

"I'm sorry Eli.  I can't do this to you...not like this."  His smile lengthened a touch.  "You're gonna hate me enough in the morning just for biting you - I don't need you wanting to kill me or yourself because I fucked you on the church altar while you were too far gone to have a choice."

 

It killed him, but he reached back and pulled the hook of Eli's leg from around himself as he eased back, stood up and, grabbing fistfulls of his brother's shirt and coat, hauled him carefully upright as well.  

 

Elijah whimpered and then frowned as his brother's lips were dragged away from him, eyes sliding open to give him a somewhat bleary look of incredulity. There was a nagging sense of doubt in his mind, finally, and he paused; there was something wrong here. Why wasn't Gabriel still kissing him? No.... Why  _was_  Gabriel kissing him...? Slowly, he licked his lips, tasting the barest tang of copper, his own blood from Gabe's lips. He frowned again. There was wine seeping into the sleeve of his jacket, and he lifted it to stare vaguely at the wet patch, purple-red spreading across the grey wool. Why was there wine on the table...? 

 

Gabriel was back, staring at him with an uncommonly tender expression and speaking words that seemed to all merge together, muffled as if he was underwater. His brow furrowed, and he tried to listen, tried to pick out the individual words as his brother continued, and it felt as if he was swimming against a current. Maybe he should just fall asleep... 

 

"You're gonna fuck me on the altar...?" He mumbled, but by the time the words were out of his mouth Gabriel's form had disappeared from his vision, and then he grunted as he was dragged upright once more, reaching out to clutch at his brother and bury his face in his neck as the room spun. He groaned. "Unnggh. What 're you  _talking_  about? This isn't how you fuck som'ne on a table."

 

"Aaaaaand there it goes."  He replied, knowing full well by now Eli was slipping past the point of no return.  "C'mere I got ya."

 

He caught Eli as he pitched forward, grabbing at him and shoving his warm face into the crook of his neck.  Gabe heaved a sigh and spared a moment to rest his cheek against the softness of his brother's hair, expression contorting into wry resignation before he turned to push a kiss bruskly against Eli's ear and pull the slightly taller boy as upright as he was going to get - sagging like cereal left in too much milk, as he was doing.  

 

It took some maneuvering but eventually he had Eli slumped halfway over one shoulder, enough so he could carry him with the tips of his toes just barely dragging on the ground, one arm curled up about his brother's center mass to keep him steady.  It was a damn good thing he was a sight stronger then he used to be, or hauling Eli along like this would have never been possible.  Even as it was, things were a bit awkward, and Gabriel found himself intensely glad that the town they lived in was so repressed; no night life, no one on the roads this late, everyone tucked safe and quiet and happily stupid in their precious houses behind their white-picket fences.  

 

It took a little while to cart Eli home, sneak him inside - that was the tricky part - and get him up to his bed.  Gabe laid him carefully upon it and had the decency to turn and pull his brother's shoes off, even if he did leave him in the rest of his clothes before pulling a blanket up over him.  Gabe hesitated, wavering in his bend over Eli before he dipped a bit lower and pushed a kiss against the center of his forehead, wiping it away a second later with a light brush of his hand, smoothing Elijah's hair off his brow before he slunk out, silent as he was getting in.


	2. I dreamt about you nearly every night this week

Eli could spend the next day beating himself up, Gabe would go ahead and take the night shift on the self-reproach patrol. He was already assuming the guard as he headed back for the church after putting his brother to bed. The hand not shoved deep into the pocket of his coat grinding its heel against the center of his forehead as fingers tightened and tugged at the mess of his hair. Stupid, stupid.

What the everliving fuck had he been thinking? Obviously, he hadn't been. He'd stopped thinking the second he stepped off the sidewalk and crossed over into the darkness of the playground toward the hunched and grieving figure of his brother. And he conveniently hadn't started the brain function again until just now. Well, what was done, was done, right? And maybe Eli wouldn't recall a thing post-bite. He was sort of hoping that was the case, but he'd never stuck around any other meal long enough to know exactly how it worked, or if perhaps it worked differently for each individual. All Gabe could do was hope, because otherwise Eli was gonna wake up really, really unhappy with him, he had no doubt.

But then again...

Gabe let himself back into the church - he didn't know why he hadn't thought of it sooner. Perfect cover and so much better then trying to find basements or abandoned stockrooms to sleep in. He and Eli had served as altar boys enough times (and beside that spent so much fucking spare time with forced church activities and social clubs, etc) that they both knew the old stone building inside and out like it was their own house. The tall, twin bell towers were no longer used, and had been boarded off for decades now. No one knew how to ring bells anymore, nor did they have the church budget to employ a Quasimodo to chime every hour, quarter and half hour along with matins, vespers...and all the canonical hours. No one did anymore, not since in the fifties they'd strung a tannoy system up in the rafters of each bell tower and began playing things on an automated recording that blared bells over half the town. Now the towers sat cold and dark above the narthex, and not even the blighted kids who played altar servers were allowed up there anymore. Gabe ducked his way back in through the basement and shut the doors behind him before heading back through the annex to the church proper. He took a moment to plow out all the candles he'd lit, one by one, slowly returning the scene of the crime to the blue dark from its warm glow. He couldn't even look at the altar with its cloth pulled askew and drenched in a sloppy red stain that looked far too close to the blood he could still taste on his tongue if he sucked at it hard enough.

But then again... That quiet devil came creeping, whispering in his ear with a soft, forked tongue that tickled at all the rotting, dark bits of awfulness he wanted so badly to believe in. Elijah hadn't wanted him to stop. Far from it, he protested each and every time he pulled back. He'd curled himself around Gabe like a girl in the backseat of a car on prom night. Gabriel wrenched the last lit candle from its sconce and carried it with him toward the narthex and the back hallways that lead up toward one of the blocked off doorways. It was simple and easy enough to tug the nails of boards loose and wrench the door open just enough to get in and shut it again, wedging one of the boards under the knob from within to keep any unwelcome visitors out.

Gabriel climbed the dark, rickety stairs slowly, lost in his own thoughts. Elijah hadn't wanted him to stop. Sure, he'd had to beg for a kiss, but... Memories of that undulating lift and arch of spine under him, how hard Eli'd been against his own cock, those fucking little mewling moans... The whole of Gabe contracted in a shiver that expelled a huff a breath that had the candle he held guttering dangerously low in its wax for a second. He'd always wanted it, ever since he could remember, from the time when it was an innocent, childish curiosity...up until, well up until now.

Feet hit the first landing and he paused to glance around at the dusty interior. It was chill and covered in cobwebs, full of disused and broken objects and furniture from the church, but he didn't care. It was cozy, and he'd have some time to make it feel more like home later... for now, the night was wearing on. He drug a pile of chairs away from an old storage closet, emptied the shallow thing out, blew out the candle and took refuge inside, shutting the doors behind himself and the darkness in as he huddled against the wall and the floor, letting his head rest against the join of the corner as eyelids grew heavier and heavier as sunrise neared. He'd had time to go back and forth, inside and out of all those thoughts - and replay the little scene down in the church about twenty times over in his head, till his hands had strayed down against the constriction in his jeans, only halfheartedly working to exacerbate tension rather then relieve it before he passed out cold as the sun hit the horizon.

 

 

Eli had woken up with a roaring headache and the familiar knowledge that he hadn't had nearly enough sleep, and it was very likely for a completely useless reason. Usually, though, it was because he'd been out walking and had lost track of time; sometimes it was because he was studying (months ago, anyway, when he could keep his mind on on schoolwork); sometimes he just couldn't sleep. Last night... not so much.

He only had vague recollections of the second half of his night. He remembered his walk, he remembered - with a sharp intake of breath - Gabriel's entrance. He remembered taking him to the church, and the holy water, and the communion wine... and then things became a little fuzzy. They'd always had the wine together; that wasn't a big deal. Maybe he should have wondered why Gabriel didn't partake this time, and maybe he should have wondered whether he was unable to imbibe now that he was a - gulp - vampire. But all he could think was that he evidently hadn't been drunk enough, because he still remembered a grimace-worthy amount of his behavior, and very little of it had been anywhere approaching appropriate.

Maybe if they had only kissed, if they'd only hooked up drunkenly, he could have worked out some way to reconcile it with himself. Despite the risk of stating the obvious, Gabriel was... a man. A man and his brother. There were all kind of laws, both legal and biblical, that called him the vilest of sinners; how could they get past this? And what did Gabriel think of him? He'd practically wrapped himself entirely around the other boy like some kind of barnacle.

Elijah sighed, forehead dropping into his palm as he continued to stare blankly at his calculus homework. School today had been - well, Purgatory had seemed fairly idyllic by second period, at any rate. He'd always taken hangovers poorly; he wasn't someone who was often sick, and so having a sickness he couldn't avoid or alleviate tended to make him the worst kind of pathetic. It might have been bearable, if it first thought that morning hadn't been 'What the hell sat on my head' and been followed immediately by 'Oh, it was my brother's face.'

Pressing his lips together in a grimace, he scrubbed a hand over his face and stood up in exasperation, more than sick of attempting to pay attention to his homework. It had to be past midnight by now, and the house around him was asleep... and he couldn't help but wonder what Gabriel was doing. His first instinct had been to go back to the park, or to the church, to see if he'd show up. Some part of him wondered whether he'd dreamed it all, and he just had a particularly perverted subconscious. Part of him had wanted to go straight from school to the church, straight to the confession booth - but that thought had led to a vivid mental image of the cathedral lit by candlelight, and the altar cloth stained with red wine, and that had made him shiver so hard he just about fell out of his chair. Which made him think that actually going to the cathedral was probably a fairly terrible idea.

Not to mention that his alarm clock this morning had been his mother's shocked-and-appalled face (patent pending) and a fairly nonsensical screech about juvenile delinquents breaking into the church.

Feeling like a criminal, he sighed and turned out his bedroom lights, shoving his arms through a jacket as he quietly closed his bedroom door behind him and tiptoed down the stairs to the foyer. Maybe he would just go for a walk; he didn't have to see Gabriel, right?  He bit his lip.  If Gabriel even wanted to see him, that is. The front door closed with a quiet snick, and he stepped as quietly as he could out onto the street, his heart picking up speed.

He'd not found Gabriel. Elijah didn't know why he had expected to, really; Gabriel was probably avoiding him, or out hunting, having weird erotic porno-style Bite Scenes (Trademark Elijah Carpenter) with others in the town. He could see it now: his brother wrapped around various members of their town like the two of them had been entwined last night, a thin, picturesque line of blood escaping Gabriel's lips against their necks - and it changed the more he thought about it, switched from person to person, people he knew from church or school or even those he saw in the streets or at the supermarket; old people, young people, the pretty girls from school... And he was in a bad mood by the time he found himself crunching across snow to the slide where he'd found, or been found by Gabriel the night before, and that bad mood sharpened when his brother wasn't there, and sharpened further when he acknowledged that he had, in fact, been seeking his brother out.

He stomped away, hands thrust sullenly the pockets of his coat - a different coat tonight, because the one he had woken up in was now ruined, because he'd basically had gay sex on a table with wine all over it, stroke one for awesome choice-making. His morality - which had returned with the sobriety, useful as that was - told him he should be at home, in bed, asleep, where Gabriel couldn't get him - because vampires couldn't enter houses to which they were not invited, he knew that, he knew that because in another stunning lapse of judgement he had googled vampires for an hour on his study break instead of studying for his chemistry final like a not shitty person would. And he definitely hadn't watched several fairly ambient and subtextually erotic videos from various films involving vampires and humans getting off on the exchange of blood. It wasn't his fault Youtube had autoplay.

Slowly, as he walked, careful to trample as much snow and foliage as he could, his anger ebbed, and instead of scowling fiercely at the bleached pale streets, he was frowning sourly at him. He'd spent his whole life learning the Word of God, learning strict morality from the Bible and his parents and his peers, and until yesterday he had been so - so sure in it. He knew right from wrong, he knew how to be good.  And in the course of a single night (and a single bottle of communion wine, speaking of sins) he had trashed it all, done things he never would have dreamed of before.  Right on cue, a sense memory of Gabriel's body pressed against him - of delicious friction between heavy cocks, of the sublime connection of his brother feeding on him - seized him, and he blushed and ran a hand through his hair.  It wasn't strictly true that he never would have dreamed of those things, really.  He had dreamed of them before, had thought of them in the secret, dark haven of his bed, had almost taken a hand to himself to those imaginings. But those were just thoughts. They weren't intentions, they weren't - he couldn't help them.

He bit his lip, but paused as his foot crunched on frozen grass under the snow instead of the sidewalk he had been on, and he looked up, and his eyes widened.  He had been just walking, aimless and without thought, and like a sign from Heaven, he had ended up exactly where he should have been walking all along - the large, imposing form of the cathedral loomed before him, and he breathed out in relief, feeling abruptly like he was about to cry.

"Thank you," He whispered with feeling, his breath fogging in the air before his face, and glanced up once before hurrying around to the side and letting himself quietly through the basement door of the church. Maybe this was wrong, too; he was breaking in, after all. He'd never done this without Gabriel with him. But part of him couldn't help but think that this couldn't be anything but right, couldn't be anything but God reaching out to him, and he hurried through the passages to the main building, just about sagging with relief as he was met with the dark pews and altar.

With numb, shaking hands, he rooted in his pocket for a moment and brought up his phone, using the screen to see his way up the aisle and find the box of matches that were always in the pulpit. He only lit one candle, sure to replace the matches where he had found them, and then seated himself not in his family's usual pew but a few back. There was a moment of perfect silence, his mind blank as he looked around, and then he lowered his head and clasped his hands, praying for forgiveness and guidance.

 

 

It may have been the meal that did it, but Gabe slept, no pun intended, like the dead that day. Unconscious to all the world until the sky was on fire under the dull haze of winter clouds; the only color to show its face in the town that dreary day - and it died away so quickly. He'd climbed up into the rafters to watch from between the slats of the tower's shutters, only leaving when the speakers began blaring the chimes of the half hour. He had nowhere to go, really, and was stuck until all the activities down below died down - CCD classes, choir practice, and so on. When at last the doors of the church were shut he let himself out of the tower, but still - where was he going to go?  Back to sit in a tree outside Eli's window, pinningly watching him do schoolwork like some kind of awful teen-novel obsessive vampire?  Hell no.  And walking the streets seemed like a dull distraction.  He wanted to see Eli again, but... Well there were a great deal of 'buts' and 'what ifs' standing in the way of seeking him out.

There was nothing for it but to climb down to the church and slump down in the rear pew, laying comfortably with his head propped against the end armrest, looking up into the dark at the garishly painted angels above, indulging the circles of his thoughts until - a door shut somewhere in the church and the cold blue electric light of a phone screen lit the darkness. He pushed himself up to watch over the edge of the pew as his brother - OF COURSE - made his way toward the pulpit, lit a candle and claimed one of the pews.

Eli was so wrapped up in his pious prayer that Gabe hardly needed the gift of moving swiftly and silently to sneak up on him, and though not even the pew creaked a bit as he settled in right beside his brother, Gabe had the distinct sense that Eli was so wrapped up in pleading for forgiveness or his soul or whatever that he wouldn't have noticed anyway. He cleared his throat softly.

"Say one for me?"

 Elijah had been midway through a very earnest monologue in which he was debating the virtues of telling his parents he did a Bad Thing and asking them to ground him until he went to college, and maybe enroll him in more Bible Study classes, because clearly he wasn't getting enough Bible in him.... when a voice piped up beside him, and he gasped sharply and threw himself sideways out of the pew to stagger into the aisle, his eyes wide and his heart racing.

Gabriel. Of course it was Gabriel, chilling out next to him when he was trying to convince God (and himself) that he was not an awful, disgusting moral degenerate for trying to get naked with Gabriel on the altar twenty feet away. Of course. It was beautiful, really, the horrible, perfect irony of it.  Gabriel could chill out in the church in the middle of the night all he wanted, because he was a good vampire with a soul (or something; Elijah hadn't finished watching all the Buffy he'd downloaded to his kindle), the only unnatural thing here was the good vampire's brother, who had spent the day entertaining notions of straddling the good vampire in a church pew.  Which the good vampire was nonchalantly sitting in.

For God's sake, this had to be some kind of ridiculous test of his faith.  Shitting fuck.

"What the Hell, Gabe?!" He hissed, his arms poised in the air as though he was going to fight off an attacker, and glared at his brother. "That's really how you choose to say hi in the middle of a dark church after midnight?  Why don't you go ahead and knife me while you're at it, fuck!"

 Gabe tried hard as he could not to laugh, and in his defense he did manage not to. All that came out was a muffled rush of breath before his cocked smile was shining brightly across the aisle at his flustered brother. Shitting fuck, indeed.

"Alright well tell me, whats the best way to say hi in the middle of a dark church after midnight?"  He stretched arms out across the back of the pew, completely unbothered, dark head canting slightly, the stiff leather collar of his jacket brushing at his chin.  "Knife you? What a waste."

Gabe rolled eyes, covering how deeply uncomfortable and awkward this all felt under thick layers of dry humor, and opened a hand in gesture to the seat beside him.

"Calm your tits, Eli. I'm sorry. Sit down. You looked like a man begging all kinds of forgiveness just before death took him, alright?  You've never done a thing wrong in your whole life - you're the best person I know.  Stop flagellating yourself and take a breath?"

Gabriel chewed thoughtfully on his lower lip, gaze dropping into his own lap.

"I guess you're pretty pissed at me, huh? I mean...I guess I owe you an apology or something. I wasn't...I didn't want you to be upset, but I guess I kinda knew you would be. I was hoping you didn't remember much, maybe, well....yeah ok." Gabe fumbled that whole thing like a one armed man juggling chainsaws.  Arms drew in defensively and face screwed itself up as he inwardly screamed at himself to shut the fuck up, already.

 Elijah watched him for a moment, brow furrowed in thought. Gabriel was... guilty?  He felt guilty?  He frowned, thinking back over the night before - as if he hadn't thought about it enough, and in church of all places ugh - and shame washed over him, and he looked away awkwardly.  He'd kissed Gabriel; it was that simple.  He couldn't remember everything totally, but he remembered that much - Gabriel feeding on him, and him getting so frustrated (cough) that he'd kissed his brother.  Then as if that wasn't bad enough, he'd wrapped himself around Gabriel like he wanted him to - to - uh.

"Apologise for what?"  Eli said finally, and took a deep, silent breath. This could be forgotten. They both regretted it - it was just... a drunken mistake.  He would have to reconcile himself with God, but it didn't have to damage his relationship with his brother. Surely.

He steeled himself to lie, lowering his arms and attempting to look as relaxed as possible.

"I don't remember anything, of course. Communion wine is always the worst," He said, and that part was sincere; communion wine was the worst.  He moved back into the pew, sitting down next to Gabe as though nothing had happened.  Which it hadn't. Nothing at all. They could forget.

"What happened last night, anyway? I remember the blood thing. You creature of the night, you."  Eli grinned, leaning back and slouching in the pew, snowboots - still wet - propping up against the hymnal shelf. "After that it's all a blur, and I woke up fully clothed, which is really impressive on a school night."

Gabe glanced up, and the surprise upon his face was a beautifully honest thing, chased away all too quickly by the battle raged between relief, regret....and disappointment?

"Oh..." Words failed him. Eli had be praying like a damned man. He was so sure... "Oh."

 _Fuck_. Disappointment won that round with the tone of that word.  He tried and failed to rearrange features into something less, well just less.  Disappointment was starting to win the war there too. Gabe would have liked to think he was presenting as calm, cool, collected.  In reality it was far more kicked puppy.  But he forced an unbecoming smile that never made its way out of being aimed at his own lap.

"Uh...nothing, really.  I mean, you got a little drunk is all.  You let me have a meal..." Eyes shot up and for a second gratitude won out, soft and genuine, "Thank you. Again, I guess.  I was really hungry.  And uhm, we made a bit of a mess, but after you just passed out.  That's...that's all.  I was afraid you'd be upset."   Brows drew as Gabe scrutinized his brother's face intently.   "You looked upset, just now. What were you asking for?"

 Elijah watched his candle flicker as Gabriel spoke, frowning slightly at his explanation. He couldn't look at his brother - he felt like if he looked at him, the half-tortured expression on his face would give him away instantly.  It was easier this way, that was all; if they didn't deal with it, didn't talk about the new, horribly inevitable sexual tension between them.  It was easier, if it was as though it had never happened.  Maybe then Elijah would stop thinking about it, and would eventually forget, and see his brother as his brother again and not the object of his dreams and waking fantasies, as if there had ever been much of a distinction there.

Gabe's question about his prayers made him flinch, and he looked over quickly, startled.  What had he been praying for? An end to incestual, gay thoughts, no big deal.  Shit.  He opened his mouth, paused, and closed it again before looking away; what the hell was he meant to tell Gabriel?  He cleared his throat, brain working frantically.

"For... guidance," He said, which was true; the best lies contained seeds of the truth, after all. "I...."

Words failed him for a moment. Gabriel looked exactly the same, of course, and his every sense seemed to gang up on him for a moment as the scent of sandalwood and candles and snow and leather lined up perfectly with his brother's candlelit face, and a flush crept hotly up his neck in response.

"I am still not sure how being a ... meal for the undead relates, you know, morally. There are passages in the Bible about blood drinking and partaking of the flesh of others, and...." He cleared his thoat. "Uh. Yeah. So talking to God seemed necessary."

 "Mhm." The unconvinced noise was about all Gabriel could manage as he watched Eli flinch and fidget. Yeah, they had been thick as thieves far too long for that bullshit to fly.  Gabe had always been the better liar, the better everything awful.  It was a small miracle the Carpenters had kept him, demon spawn.  How many times had be convinced himself that the only reason they didn't shove him back into the endless cycle of the foster system was because he served as a perfect foil to their own two little angles.  A living confirmation that their biological offspring were clearly superior to all others; pious, flawless children.  And then him.  And weren't they such good Christians to put up with this parent-less, godless wretch?  Of course they were.

Regardless, he was about to stop buying the line of BS Eli was trying to feed him.

"What? I mean, really? It was an act of generosity, wasn't it? You weren't an accessory to murder, Eli, just...you just..."

 _You just fucking ground against me like I'd shoved a fifty in your underwear and you had rent due tomorrow, that's all. Oh also, you kiss really well even when you're sloppy drunk as hell._ Thank god none of that managed to make its way off the tip of his tongue.

"It was nothing, Eli. Its fine, you're fine." Mouth tightened in the shallowest approximation of a reassuring curve as he rose, pushed affectionate at the side of his brother's face, and turned to pick his way out of the pew, heading the long way so he didn't have to invade Eli's space by stepping over him to get out.

Selfishly, some part of Elijah was relieved to hear the things that Gabe said, even if he wasn't totally sure he believed them. He hadn't done the wrong thing, had he? The Bible implied that letting someone drink your blood was more or less akin to witchcraft, but surely in the circumstances.... surely he had only helped Gabriel prevent having to hurt anyone else?

Of course, the treacherous part of his mind whispered that Gabriel feeding didn't hurt. What he'd really done was make sure that, at least for that night, Gabriel didn't make anyone else feel like he'd made Eli feel.  Effectively, he was that one cheerleader who gave up her virginity so her boyfriend wouldn't leave her.  Greeeat.

He sighed, and by the time he looked up with a clear expression, his brother had stood up and was moving away, and he jumped up, scurrying after him, despite that he was pretty sure Gabe didn't want to be anywhere near him right now.

"Where are you going?" He called, and stopped with some effort at the outer edge of the pew, determined that he wouldn't force his presence on his brother. It was probably for the best, anyway; Gabriel probably wanted to go feed, and probably wanted to feed on anyone that wasn't him, thanks to his proven lack of ability to keep his hands (and other things) to himself. And if he followed Gabriel and Gabriel wanted to feed on someone else, he had a nasty suspicion he wasn't going to feel great about that.

Gabe paused outside of the pew and turned just enough to glance over his shoulder.

"Back up to my closet in the belfry - you know, with the bats." He grinned at his own awful joke, shrugging slightly as he shoved hands into the pockets of his jeans. "I'd invite you to join me, but I'm pretty sure you're already super comfortable in your own closet."

Cool grey eyes regarded his brother unflinchingly. There it was, ball's in your court. It was more then a little unnerving how calmly he managed to drop that bomb, and how nonchalantly expectant he was watching his brother. Lower lip tucked itself inward for a thoughtful little suck before it escaped again in a slow slidE, left damp.  Gabe was hungry again, but not terribly so, and he'd taken a lot out of Eli last night.

"Don't worry about it, Eli. It was my fault, I asked for it - all of it.  If you gotta justify yourself to god, then just tell him you did it for me."  One half of his mouth tugged upward with that aching charm of his and he turned to start back toward the narthex, words carrying back from behind him, "Tell him the devil made you do it."

Elijah frowned at his brother, his brow furrowing in confusion. He stayed where he was, uncertain how to respond, his fingers just lightly fidgeting on the back of the pew to his left. Why was Gabriel being so.... cold?  Did he think all this was his fault, did he blame Elijah for what happened the night before?  Or maybe he was trying to distance himself because he knew what they'd done was wrong and couldn't happen again?

He shifted slightly to step forward, but as he glanced down at his feet and back up, unexpectedly his hurt feelings transformed into a slightly bewildering anger that owed its heat more to fear than anything else.

"What is that supposed to mean, my own closet?" He demanded, voice a little strangled, though he knew perfectly well what Gabriel was implying, and some rational part of him whispered, _well, you didn't get to second base with a girl last night_.

He swallowed, leaning back, torn between wanting to run away - from this church, this conversation, how dangerous this relationship had become - and wanting to step up to Gabe and smack him until things were normal again.  His eyes dropped, and he grimaced at the marble flooring, and then took a deep breath and pivoted where he stood to weave his way back down the pew.

"I'll just go."

 Gabe had paused in his retreat, and turned to watch Eli flounder, his own mouth opened to reply, snark at the ready... but the hurt, anger, and bewilderment that chased each other across his brother's features was enough to force him to snap his jaw right back closed.  A hot, unpleasant rush of guilt washed over him as Eli's face dropped, crestfallen and confused. That internal game of kickball with himself was starting back up again, in force.

Eli turned to go and Gabe growled softly through the clench of teeth, turning on his heel to chase after, catching him up, arms wrapping round him from behind to halt his brother's retreat as he thudded solidly into the back of him.  Oh how quick the tables turned when they played reverse-chicken.

"Eli, stop.  Stop.  Look, I'm sorry.  I - I didn't mean anything, I was just being a dick, alright?  I'm not myself."  Gabe's turn to lie, to kick a shallow grave of dirt over the truth.  He shoved his forehead in the crook of his brother's neck, skin pleasantly cool against the heat of Eli's flush.  He shifted a bit, laying cheek against Eli's shoulder so the soft of hair tickled against ear and throat, not giving up his grasp, hands spread wide against the other boy's chest.  He could feel the wet, resounding thud of a heartbeat there and it was strangely comforting.  Like a metronome perfectly set to mimic your own heartbeat...if you had one.

"Please don't go. I'm lonely."

 Elijah had barely made it three steps before he was suddenly rooted to the spot by a weight against his back, and he froze, and failed to suppress the shiver that ran through him at the familiar touch. He licked his lips, and stared quellingly at the pew in front of him as if it was at fault, and only after a moment trusted himself to speak.

"If you're lonely you probably shouldn't be a dick to your only brother," he muttered, heavy pout translating into his voice, and then tilted his head and craned his neck to look at where Gabriel was apparently intent on burrowing into his neck and falling asleep, and suppressed a second shudder a little better than the first time.

He cleared his throat a little awkwardly, facing forward again so that only the empty church would be privy to the face he was pulling, which was a mix of this-is-awkward and I'm-not-moving. His heartbeat slowly picked up speed.

"Are you, um, dowsing for a vein or something?"

 "Yeah well..." The answer he got was as flippant as humanly or inhumanly possible. As if Gabe being Gabe excused his behavior. Arms tightened a bit as Eli moved to turn, a bit hesitant before their inevitable release. Gabriel was left standing toe to toe with his recalcitrant brother - well, a bit closer then that, one foot halfway in-between both of Eli's - and his careless grin faltered with his question. Dark head jerking back slightly as he blinked at Eli in a commingling of shock and no small amount of surprise.

"What...no? Eli, I'm not some kind of... I don't have to..." Point, Elijah. Leaving Gabe a bit speechless was no small feat. Even his recovery was a bit sloppy; the way features tried to recover their usual careless charm. "W-why? Was that something you wanted?"

 _Or you still still need to read some scripture and pray about it?_   Fortunately did NOT make its way out of his mouth, though it did come crashing against the backs of teeth that clipped firmly down like an ivory dam on them.

 Eli blinked, chewing on his lip, his eyes wide in the darkness. Again with the accusations! Okay, probably more like observations.  Untrue ones.  Probably.  He cleared his throat, glancing around so that he didn't have to look at Gabriel (which was becoming harder and harder since he discovered what Gabe's face looked like after kissing), and shuffled slightly where he stood.

"I was kidding," He said defensively, but his voice was unsure, and he absently rolled the edge of his jacket between two fingers at his side. He looked up, thankful for the darkness that would hide his blush (to human eyes, anyway, but he hadn't considered that).  He blatantly ignored Gabriel's question.

"You're going to have to get used to endless vampire jokes at your expense, you know. I'm going to start buying you body glitter." He smiled slightly, more a grimace than anything. "We'll find you your Bella Swan yet."

 "Oh fuuuuuck you!" Even if Eli couldn't see that well in the dark, the dryly amused tone held the curve of Gabe's grin in it well enough to hear. "If I see one fucking speck of glitter I'm gonna make sure you regret it till you're forty, alright?"

At Gabe's side, one hand fisted before it released and rose, reaching... fingertips barely ghosting against the soft rise of fine hair along the line of Eli's jaw before they smoothed over the curve of his neck, thumb settling comfortably into a soft tracing line against the hollow of his cheek.  Gabe shifted weight, foot to foot, settling microscopically closer, though that inch felt like he'd taken a mile.

"And you're not 'finding' anyone. Especially not a goddamned Bella, alright?" God knew he'd had more then enough of the girls in this town at school.  He rocked forward, forehead pressing against forehead momentarily, and the weight of it was crushing, enough to suck all the oxygen out of the massive church before he rocked back again, just a fraction.  "I'm just fine, Eli. I got you back, yeah?"

Who else did he ever need? No one, Eli had only ever been the one person who mattered. Gabe's laugh was a soft thing in the dark, nose brushing his brother's carelessly, those cold fingertips burning behind the hollow of an ear, along the nape of his neck. The next time he spoke, it was so much quieter, voice hitching on something unseen, lodged in the lean line of his throat.

"I was angry... when I came back. Really angry, for a while. Nothing was right, nothing was fair. This...wasn't how things were supposed to be. But then realized I got to see you again... and everything was ok." There was a moments pause for the sharp inhale of a breath, as if he'd suck all that confession back in with it, but, "And then I was glad I wasn't dead."

 Elijah's mouth had begun to spread in a laugh at Gabriel's indignation, only to stop dead, dying in his throat as pale hands reached out to cradle his face, as if they were lovers or something, as if they were in love. He inhaled sharply, and brown eyes lit on the suddenly intense expression on Gabriel's face, but he was still unprepared at the intimacy that grew between them. It was like Gabriel was about to kiss him, like they were suspended on the precipice of something else - there was no blood exchange this time, no communion wine to ease the way and be thrown between like as a scapegoat.

And he was whispering words like secrets between them, as if they were nothing, as if he wasn't subtly stripping away the things that held them apart, that stopped them from - something. Stopped Eli from falling into immorality, stopped them from being more than brothers. Elijah swallowed. They weren't ready for this. They couldn't do this, couldn't act like sweethearts like they were doing, like they couldn't seem to help themselves from doing.

"I'm... glad you aren't dead... too," He said lamely, and winced, because that was about the stupidest thing he could have said. Gabriel's face near his seemed to make all his neurons stop firing or something. Maybe it was a vampire thing. More likely it was just a Gabe thing. He glanced down at Gabriel's lips, without blood this time, and then his eyes slid away again. "I think you'd look quite fetching in glitter. We could pencil in your eyebrows, too."

Grey eyes shut and the generous line if his mouth tightened into a narrow line before they opened again to roll heavenward. Head shook and shoulders hunched with repressed laughter as that tender grip upon his brother's face turned into a light shove before it fell away and he stepped back.

"Sweet fuck, Eli! So much for heartfelt confessions, huh? You are WAY too into this idea of putting makeup on me - I'm starting to get a little concerned. Next it'll be lipgloss and a skirt."

Gabe backed away, turning to head back up to the bell tower as he had been, but canted his head toward his destination this time, in open invitation.

"Come on, I want a cigarette." He was already digging into the inner pocket of his coat, fishing for the near empty pack before digging into jeans for a lighter.  "And if you really want to help me, or you wanna get me something- forget about the stupid glitter and help me spring my car outta the impound lot."

Eli followed quickly, feeling very much like he should have a wagging tail as a grin spread across his face. Okay, so he wasn't so good at the deep-and-meaningfuls - maybe he would have been more forthcoming with words if his mouth wasn't running on the assumption it was about to be used for something else. Not that he wanted it to be. It wasn't his fault his brain seemed to be ceasing to exist whenever Gabriel got within ten feet. But maybe that was just how he was genetically predisposed to respond to vampires. Even if he had been perfectly fine using his brain around Gabriel until it had discovered what else he could be doing with Gabriel that didn't involve brain power.

"I'm sure they absolutely wouldn't expect me to spring my dead brother's car out of the lot," He responded finally, after he'd caught up with Gabe and was following him through the back of the church. It was true; if Gabe's car disappeared, Eli would be the first suspect, thanks to the ridiculous fuss he'd put up when the Police had told him they weren't returning the damn thing, months before. They'd probably be at his door at 8am (and not 6am purely because they were Polite Christian Gentlemen, and his mother would give them a lecture anyway) demanding to know what he'd done with it.

He frowned suddenly, lookingly sharply at Gabriel. Why would Gabe need his car? Unless he was going to.... "What are you going to do with it?"

 "Yeah well...I don't mean like jump the fence and boost the thing. I mean apply to have it released. I can maybe write up some papers or something that you uh...find in a drawer, I don't know? Saying I willed my car and everything to you? I mean, they only need the thing so long as they can collect evidence from it, right? How much more can they get?"

His ignorance of law-enforcement procedure notwithstanding, Gabe thought he made a few good points. He hauled the door to the tower open and held it for Eli, following in after him to shut the door behind them both and climb up behind his brother into the dark, the spark of his lighter illuminating the rickety stairs for a moment as he set light to the end of the cigarette between his lips, and a second later the familiar, slightly bitter scent of burning tobacco wafted up from behind Eli as he climbed. Once up on the first landing, Gabe stepped around his brother in the dark and lit a few candles here and there, enough for a bit of warm, dim light. He collapsed upon an abandoned pew - one of its armrests busted - in a long sprawl, one knee bent up, foot upon the seat and head upon the unbroken armrest.

The glint of silver sheen eyes flicked up and followed Eli as silver-blue wisps of smoke curled lazily upward from his mouth as he opened it.

"Hm? Oh... you know. Was gonna use it to try jumping three school buses. Or maybe to rob a bank? Actually I was thinking of supercharging it, dropping in a cool air exhaust, maybe jacking up the rear end and then starting a gang of highway thieves that hijack tractor-trailers full of illicit goods. Then someone could make a move about us. Too Dead, Too Demented. What do you think?"

 Elijah briefly entertained the notion of snatching Gabriel's cigarette out of his hand as he lit it, a glare crossing his face. He hated that Gabe smoked - he always had, and usually he would have grabbed the foul thing, at least briefly, before Gabe snatched it right back. It was an ongoing battle between them, one that Elijah had missed in a perverse way, and one that he knew he was likely to never win. Unfortunately, since he could barely see where he was going and was certain he was going to trip and break his neck at any moment, he didn't think twisting around to grab a cigarette in the dark was altogether a wise choice.

That didn't stop him from glaring, though. And when Gabe decided that lounging on a church pew like an underwear model was appropriate, he stopped and scowled at him, crossing his arms.

"I was serious. But fine, don't tell me. I can't believe you're smoking in church," He said, voice edged with incredulity, and reached out, palm up. He wiggled his fingers. "Take it outside or give it here. It's bad enough that you're still smoking these things after death, for God's sake."

 Gabe arched an eyebrow up at his brother and very, very briefly entertained the notion of retorting that given recent events? Smoking was the least of the sins he'd perpetrated in this particular church. Still, he pulled the hand holding the cigarette a bit closer to his chest...after taking another rebellious draw upon it, of course.

"No!" All of a sudden they were ten again and refusing to share toys. He exhaled a breath of curling smoke again and took another petulant drag, as if it were a dare. "We're not in the sanctuary, calm down, its just the old bell tower, no one cares. Besides, I'm dead right? Its not like they can kill me."

The grin he shined upward at his brother was pure, shit-eating perfection. The kind you wanted to strangle him for...or otherwise forcibly remove.

"So...back to my car?"

 Briefly, Elijah considered letting Gabe have that particular point, and letting him continue smoking. He was right, in a way; the chemicals in cigarettes weren't exactly going to kill him, were they? But that wasn't the point. They could kill Elijah, certainly, and they also stunk up the church and made it more likely that someone was going to wander into the belltower in the middle of the day and discover Gabriel, and on top of all that, they were in a church and you didn't smoke in a church.

The shitty, contrary part of his brain contributed helpfully that one didn't generally make out with their brother in a church, either, but that hadn't stopped either of them.

So instead of backing off, Eli simply levelled him with a particularly stony glare and launched himself forward, planting one knee between Gabriel's and attempting to grab at the cancer stick in his brother's hand.

 Eli's stony glare only served to widen Gabe's irritating grin further, so very pleased at getting under his brother's skin in one way or another. How satisfying then, the way it melted into a much less gleeful shape as his eyes widened when Eli lunged at him, eyes widening as he tried to move the hand holding the cigarette out of reach - and failed to be fast enough, Eli at least getting a grip upon his wrist.

"Hey! Wait...no! Eli!" The struggle to shake his wrist free sent his bottom sliding against the slick, waxed wood of the pew, and his head came thumping off its armrest and onto the seat with a solid thud that made testament to the fact that perhaps it really was hard as a bloody rock. This also meant, however, that the rest of him also slid down the pew and the center spread of legs ended up right against Eli's knee. Fortunately for Gabe, at least, not with any kind of considerable force. ...Just enough to make contact obvious. It wasn't really top on Gabe's list of priorities, though, what with trying to save his cigarette. He was doing more damage to it then good, ash falling and cherry threatening to go with it as he tried to wrench his wrist out of his brother's grasp by waving it sharply side to side. His free hand had fisted itself in the grasp of Eli's shirt and jacket at his collar.

"Look...no...Eli....you're gonna...FUCK! You're gonna get me burnt, stopit...Eli...shit!" That wavering cherry fell at last, plummeting toward the floor and extinguishing harmlessly, leaving Gabe slumping in boneless defeat as he craned his head to the side to watch it, the rest of the cigarette clutched in his hand too ruined to relight.

Safe to say pouting disappointment looked so much better on him then that prideful petulance had.

"Awwww, man! Really?" Eyes slid upward before the rest of his head turned, glaring unhappily at his brother as he shifted, however unwisely, on the narrow pew and subsequently against Eli's thigh. "I only have about three of those left."

 Eli grinned widely as they both watched the lit end of Gabriel's cigarette hit the floor, the ash crumbling on the dusty floor. He sat back in triumph, pulling his brother's wrist closer so he could pluck the mangled thing out of his grasp and toss it away triumphantly. He half sat on the leg that he had been leaning on, effectively between Gabe's legs, and released his wrist.

"Good," He said emphatically, and sent his sulking brother a very sweet, smug smile in response. "Give me those, too. You're quitting."

He looked at his brother contemplatively, sizing him up and trying to figure out which pocket was likeliest to contain the cigarettes. Unfortunately, the way he was lying didn't show any obvious box-shaped bulges... maybe he had a soft pack? He shrugged, leaning up again and leaning on one hand planted beside Gabe's head as he started to go for his brother's pockets. He hovered over his brother's prone form, leaning a little forward so he could wiggle his fingers in one of Gabe's front pockets.

"And if you buy any more I'll smoke them in front of you, three at a time."

 "No." Gabe said crossly, mouth tightening peevishly as eyes narrowed, refusing to give up the goods. "And I'm not quitting. You can't make me. You're not getting my last three, I'm almost out of money, alright?"

Dark brows drew as Eli leaned over him and began frisking pockets. There were layers upon layers of unfair going on here and Gabe was having a really hard time standing for any of them. Then again, he was so much less focused on the fate of his precious nicotine then he was the way Eli's thigh felt, wedged between his own. With how he looked bent over him in the dim light. With the way fingers were wriggling in his jeans pocket, _oh fuck it_.

Hips lifted on their own accord, though thankfully it wasn't too terribly obvious. His grip of Eli's clothes relaxed a bit, reasserting itself as fingers slipped into the opening of the collar of his shirt before tightening and pulling at it in a sharp little jerk.

"Yeah ok and...Hey!" His voice hitched as Eli's fingers dug a bit deeper, "...And I'm gonna enjoy watching you get sick after your first drag. I'm gonna get five new packs, what then?"

Elijah just rolled his eyes and huffed, giving up on that pocket and trying the other one. Maybe he had one of those fancy things you took cigarettes out of the packet to put in. With some kind of stupid design on it. He hoped it was a flaming skull or something so he could ridicule Gabe mercilessly for the rest of forever.

"I am getting your last three, spend your money on something less stupid, and if you buy five packs I'll smoke five packs," He responded matter-of-factly, a little out of breath. Getting into Gabe's pockets was a pain in the ass from this angle, and he rolled his eyes and adjusted the way he held himself up so that he was more or less pressed against his brother, his eyes focused vaguely to the side while he practically performed a cavity search on Gabe's jeans.

"Where the fuck are they? Shit, your jeans are a stupid place to keep any - aha!" He said, and pulled his brother's lighter out of his back pocket. He looked at it and frowned, tossed it away, and glanced accusingly at Gabriel. He stuck his hand in the other pocket, brow furrowed. "This is exhausting, you know. You could just give me the fucking things."

 The levels of torture here were increasing by the second. Particularly when Eli shifted forward and pressed himself against him.  Gabe shut eyes tightly.  Conceal, don't feel, man. Conceal don't - ah fuck, Eli's hand wedged itself into the back pocket of his jeans and he really did lift hips this time, and there was nothing subtle about it. No real way to hide the growing, ah...problem in his pants. Lower lip was going to start bleeding in a second the way he had it crushed between teeth, expression looking for all the world like he was being stuck with hot pokers. The tight knot of want in his stomach, still well stoked by memories of last night, was doubling itself over. He heard a clatter and eyes flew open to watch his lighter go sliding across the dusty floor.

"Hey! Not - not cool! Dude, give it...ah!" That little gasp slipped out before he could bite down on it and drag it back into his mouth, "G-give it up! The only thing you're getting is me hard."

_Fuck. Shit._

Concern flooded over features...well, concern in the shape of absolute horrified terror. What the FUCK had he just said? Eli was clearly not ready to process anything that had happened last night, and to be honest?  What if it all HAD just been because of the bite?  What if he really didn't ... What if.... AH FUCK. Gabe's face screwed up tightly, chin tucking, refusing to even glance up at whatever horror he was sure was playing itself out over his brother's gentler features. Gabe looked about ready to punch himself in the face.

Eli kept wiggling his fingers in Gabe's back pocket for about two seconds after he spoke, more than used to ignoring whatever complaining was coming out of his mouth when Eli was taking his cigarettes or making his church clothes look less like they lived in a screwed up ball under his bed - and then he froze, and stared hard at the pew to the side of his brother's head, his eyes wide. Slowly, a blush travelled up his neck and he swallowed, pulling his hand away and using it to hold himself up better.

His eyes flicked to Gabe's horrified expression and away again, and he hoped absently that his blush would be attributed to discomfort, and not the fact that okay yes, now that he was paying attention he could, in fact, feel a hardness against his leg, and his dick was beginning to think it should probably do the same... and at that thought, he quickly shoved himself off of his brother, curling up at the end of the pew, careful to keep his knees up. He stared blankly at the boarded up window, brow puckered.

"Uh - sorry," He said lowly, voice a little rough, and licked his lips. There was a lengthy pause, and he took a deep breath. "I still want your cigarettes though."

 The silence was deafening. Destroying. Tension strung through him like a trip wire, slowly fraying strand by strand, Gabe forced himself to look up, only to see an uncomfortably pink Eli shoving himself backward with enthusiasm. And curling up like a kid who'd just found out that 'the bad touch' wasn't just some snarky joke. Stomach twisting, he shoved himself upright and fumbled at words with fingers that felt fat and greased, numbly clumsy. Came up lacking and instead reached to grab the near empty pack of cigarettes from his inner jacket pocket, tossed the thing at his brother's feet and rose, heading with all alacrity for the fixed ladder that led up to the second and third landings.

"Take 'em then, if you want them so much." Tone was so much harsher then he meant it to be, roughness a sufficient refuge for embarrassed frustration as he climbed upward.

 Eli looked up, wide eyed, as the pack of cigarettes hit the floor with a sharp sound, but Gabriel was already on his feet and stalking away. Gabriel looked like he couldn't stand to be in the same room as him, his body all harsh lines and his tone worse, and Elijah watched him in bewilderment, his mouth hanging open. After a moment, his brother had disappeared entirely up the manhole, and Eli stood shakily, convinced that after a minute Gabe would do or say something - anything other than stalking out of the room like a sulky teenager. He bit his lip, and silence fell over the room.

A minute later, he was crouching down and picking up the cigarettes to, one by one, snap them in half and drop them again before grinding the toe of his shoe into them.

"Well, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, then!" He yelled suddenly, and glared at the ladder as if it was the one who had opened up the wound he could feel seeping in his chest. "I'm sorry to have touched you inappropriately or whatever, far be it from me to have molested you!"

Eli knew he was being childish, and what's more he knew that yelling in a church tower at 1 in the morning wasn't the smartest choice he had ever made, but he couldn't seem to help himself. It was either yell or cry, and men didn't cry. He stomped to the door and wrenched it open, a lump in his throat, as he began to stalk down the stairs.

"You know what, I'll get you your stupid fucking car and you can go back to New York all you want!"

 Gabe had only made it to the second level landing when Eli's shouting came chasing after him. He'd been well on his way to finding some comfortable corner to curl up in and sulk when his brother's words sunk in, and frustrated bitterness shoved hurt aside to take its place. Shoulders hunched up before he turned sharply on his heel and stalked back for the opening in the floor, falling hard to a knee to lean over it.

"Oh yeah. I'm just so fucking upset. I need a goddamned adult. Someone help." There was enough sarcasm there to fell a horse. "Yeah I'm sorry too - I guess one good grope deserves another."

He'd shoved himself upright when Eli's next retort came wafting up, and he stalked back again, twice as pissed.

"FINE! GOOD. WHAT-Whatever. Get the fucking car."

He slammed the open palm of one hand against the rail of that ladder causing it to shudder violently before he stalked away and threw himself against the far wall in a slump that ended up with him huddled on the floor, knees bent up and forehead pressed into the hard bone of them.  Well.  That had gone just so fantastically.

 

Eli made it about halfway home before the tears started, pressing his lips into a thin line until his whole face ached, his hands clenched into tight, painful fists in his pockets. When had it all got so bad? He and Gabriel had not been so volatile with each other before - before.  They'd argued, sure, but it had always been the kind of arguing performed by people who knew perfectly well that they would make up in five minutes' time.  Like siblings.  They'd fought about possessions, about their reactions to parental decrees (and Gabriel's ongoing derision for obeying them at all), about the existence of God. They fought about what they would do when they could get out of Connecticut and rent a small, shitty apartment in New York.  They'd fought about Gabriel leaving. But fighting had never been this awful before.

And maybe that's what had started it - Gabriel leaving. It wasn't that he was a vampire now; that didn't effect them in the least, really, at the core of them. They could have got past that easily if the damage hadn't already been done.

And he thought, too, that at the center of the issue it was his fault - that he'd murdered some part of their relationship when Gabriel left, because he'd been so mad and felt so childishly abandoned; and he'd let the rest of it die when Gabriel had gone missing, and stayed missing, and been decided was dead.

Hands shaking, he let himself into the house a little more noisily than he intended, and he paused in the entryway to make sure no one would wake up and descend upon him like some kind of harpy. Two, three, five minutes passed; nothing stirred. He let out a breath, and kicked off his shoes at the door, leaving them dripping snow in a pile as he padded up the stairs to his bedroom. Time was, he would have made sure they were dry and put away when he got home from one of his and Gabe's adventures, but since his brother left he hadn't bothered. His mom must have noticed, but she didn't say anything; maybe she was giving him leeway since the death of his brother. More likely it was that she knew perfectly well that her youngest was out wandering the streets in the middle of the night, and thought drawing attention to it would only make it worse, and more likely the neighbors would find out.

Running a hand over his face and pressing his fingers to his frozen eyelashes, he absently flicked on his bedroom light and began to peel his stiff, damp clothes off. These too he left in a pile, uncaring, and he flicked off the light even before he pulled on a pair of sleep pants, and slipped between his sheets in the dark.

It had been him who changed, he thought; became jaded and bitter and resentful of the brother that had disappeared. He thought, subconsciously, that he likely held Gabriel accountable for his own death; even more likely, held him accountable and resented him for leaving in the first place. Gabe had left, and hadn't come back - and now that he had, everything was changed, and they couldn't seem to get along, and it was his, Elijah's, fault.

He screwed his eyes shut, and turned his face to the pillow as a fresh wave of tears came, and he reached up and covered his mouth to quell the sobs, his whole frame shaking with the power of them.

  

 

The bell tower was unbearably silent in the wake of Eli's absence. Amazing how quickly you could go from wanting to just be left the hell alone to wanting anything BUT your own miserable company. Huddled up against the uninsulated wall of the second landing in the dark, Gabe was slowly tearing himself apart.

He was a fucking idiot, wasn't he? Impatient, stupid, rash jackoff too concerned with the state of his own cock then his brother's feelings. It was the reason he'd gotten way too pushy last night...the reason there was all this unbearable tension between the two of them now. Sure, dying made you wish you'd done all kinds of things differently, and getting a second chance was like being handed a free pass to do all those things, right?  Wrong.  God, he was so wrong.

And really what had he expected? _Oh yeah, Eli, let me come back and uh, by the way I've always had a thing for you, for long as I can remember and all I want to do is make you happy... and maybe find out what face you make when you come, what noises you might make with your cock in my -_

Gabe cut that train of thought off with a groan, both hands flying to cover his face much harder then necessary. _Stop it, stop it! Christ, why was this so hard?_ It was ruining things between him and Eli, and he had to get a grip on it before things became irreparable.  He shifted, rose, and began pacing, walking mindless circles around the ladder that jutted up through the floor up toward the third and final landing. The rickety boars creaked complainingly underfoot, raining a thin storm of dust down underneath, filtering down in thick clouds through silver ribbons of cold moonlight that found their way through the slats of window shutters.

Eli hadn't meant anything, he had to keep convincing himself, he was just searching for the stupid cigarettes. He was just trying in that overbearing way of his to look out for Gabe, and all Gabe could do was be an uncomfortable jackass about it - just like always only now...now he was really being hurtful. He'd never been so awful, at least not to Eli, never to Eli. A fresh wave of stinging, sickening guilt came lapping at ankles before it washed over him. He halted in his paces, head tilting back as every other line of him slumped, one hand gripping at the collar of his own shirt.

"Fffffuck." He hissed the word between clenched teeth and let his head drop. Uugh! What was that smell -oh. Oh, it was him. Nose wrinkled as he jerked his chin back up off his chest. He couldn't recall the last time he'd seen a shower, and he was still wearing the clothes he'd been in when everything happened. Gabe stood for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Eli deserved an apology... and probably a hell of a lot more then that, though for what he could offer by way of explanation, Gabe was at a loss.

An apology, a shower, some fresh clothes... or he could curl up with his own stink and self loathing in the closet for the rest of the night and all of tomorrow and the rest of his miserable fucking undead life. Yeah, hard choice.

It didn't take long to get to his old house after he left the church, making sure the tower still looked boarded up, and breaking into his old room wasn't hard at all. He'd intentionally broke the lock on the sash of his one window ages ago, and the back porch overhang that lead up to it only took one easy jump to catch its ledge and haul himself upward onto it's slope. He was carefully quiet letting himself inside and sneaking out of the room, across the hall, and even more cautious letting himself into Eli's room - shutting and locking the door behind himself with a quiet snick of the latch.

"Eli?"

 

Eli had been dreaming. Well, perhaps dreaming wasn't the right word; when he'd fallen into a fitful doze half an hour before, he'd still been crying and that had translated perfectly into the dream, and he was reliving the argument over and over again, reliving the fraught silence before Gabriel had stood up and stalked away, in the hazy, vague sort of way that characterised it as a dream. And as the fights continued, and became worse, occasionally they would end in Gabriel getting his car and driving away, to New York or to anywhere else, and Elijah left alone again. Sometimes he saw Gabriel feeding off others, faceless strangers or the girls he used to hang out with at school, and that was almost worse.

But it wasn't really sleep, and wasn't really rest; it was only really his body switching off and his mind taking over, and he cried through it, scalding hot tears that pooled at his temples and in the dip of his nose against the pillow, and when his bedroom door opened the dream had begun to break and dissipate like clouds. At the quiet utterance of his name, the last of the fog lifted and he woke with a sharp inhale, and his heart thudded painfully for the time it took his eyes to adjust, and for him to stare blankly at Gabriel for a moment.

"Gabe?" He whispered, his voice heavy with sleep, and he sniffed. His eyes flicked to the door, but he couldn't quite muster the energy or the will to care what his mother would do if she woke up and wandered in to find her dead son hanging around. Sluggishly, he sat up and moved to sit against the headboard, watching his brother and running a tired hand over his face, feeling grimy and tearstreaked. "What are you doing here?"

 "I...uhm, I'm smelly and I'm stupid and I came to apologize." he murmured, trying to be as quiet as possible, glancing uncomfortably around the old, familiar room before shucking his jacket and hoodie both and leaving them atop the pile of Eli's own clothes before heading for the bed, cautiously climbing onto the opposite end of it from his brother. He perched upon the very edge of it tenuously, as if expecting Eli to lash out and kick him off of it any second now - not that he'd blame him.

Hands pressed themselves together, fingers fidgeting as he straightened arms and let them hang between the narrow spread of his knees. The hunched line of him as contritely awkward as he felt.

"I'm sorry, Eli. I'm an asshole...I don't want to leave. I mean, I want to go to New York, but I never wanted to go without you. And I didn't mean to... I didn't..." Suddenly the sound of his brother's sniffle registered itself and Gabe's face jerked upward, cool eyes trained upon Elijah's face as brows furrowed discerningly. "Eli...are you? You're..."

He shifted, rose and resumed a seat up the bed, beside where Eli huddled, no hesitation in the way he reached out, rubbed knuckles against one over heated, damp and salt-stained cheek.

"Oh, Eli. Please don't cry." It was a broken little plea, one that Elijah was surely used to hearing, painfully familiar. How many times had he cracked under the stress as they were growing up?  Under the pressure of parents or school or just _everything_ and Gabe had been there, comforting, just sitting with him, arm around him, pleading with him the same quiet way.

Elijah watched him move closer with the cautious hope of someone reaching out towards a wild animal. He didn't have it in him to be angry at Gabe any more; he hadn't really had it in him since he left the church, or even since he left the belltower. They'd always been like that. Quick to anger and quick to wretched, pathetic loneliness without the other. They were probably unusually close for siblings, maybe; Elijah had read a story about it once, of co-dependent siblings in the 1920's who'd died, smoking and sated, their skeletons entwined on a stained mattress. It was macabre, but he couldn't help but see them that way, just a little, with their dreams of a horrible New York tenement apartment and their quiet, denied co-dependency.

"'M not crying," He responded quickly as Gabriel wiped at his tears, and he pulled a face, his cheeks salt-stiff and aching. He sniffed again, and then gently ducked out of his brother's hold and slipped out of bed to pad across the floor and flick on the light in his adjoining bathroom. It wasn't an en suite, since it technically was shared between his room and his sister's, but she was away at college and it was thankfully a much safer option than making Gabe shower in the bathroom down the hall.

He squinted into the sudden bright light, reaching up to run a hand through his hair and gesturing vaguely behind him to beckon his brother over. He glanced in the mirror - yep, he looked like hell. His eyes were all red, and he was flushed and shiny from tears. Quickly he leaned over and threw some water in his face, flinching in the cold as it dripped down onto his bare chest. He usually wore a sleep shirt, but common sense hadn't been particularly forthcoming when he got back to the house earlier.

"Here," He said, and tossed a folded towel so it hit Gabriel in the face. He smiled slightly. "If it makes you feel any better, I'm taking summer classes before college starts in the fall - I'l be driving down to New York in mid May."

 Gabe pulled his hand back as if he'd tried to touch a hot stove when Eli reached to brush at his his own face and then ducked away to rise. He backpedaled slightly and rose along with Eli, jumping up perhaps a bit too quickly, but his brother didn't seem to notice, and he trailed him at a distance into the bathroom. He'd never understood how Eli could stand to share that space with their sister. Demanding, prissy bitch. Gabe would have chewed his own arm off rather then have to share even a bathroom with her.

Eli flicked on the light and the pupils of pale eyes contracted into pinpricks, leaving him looking almost alien. How long had it been since he'd seen proper incandescent lighting? In the bright light Eli looked like a mess...and Gabe looked like a murder scene. All the smudges, dried blood, stains and the unhealthy pallor that dim light and candles were so very forgiving of, the limelight of real bulbs put on harsh display. Even with all that there was something unearthly beautiful about him, like the opalescence of a pearl shining under a film of dirt.

Gabe seemed utterly unaware of himself though, far too fixated on his brother. He was already moving forward when the towel hit him in the face.

"Eli... umph." He caught the towel and wrenched his gaze from his brother's face to the terrycloth he was twisting between strong fingers. "Oh? Yeah, that'll be good. I mean, really good." Mouth pursed to one side tightly as he set the towel down and moved for the shower, plucking at the mess of his filthy shirt. "If you don't want me to come with, I'll understand."

Elijah smiled slightly and turned to respond, one hand absently wiping drops of water from his collarbones, when he was caught by Gabriel's appearance, and the words died on his tongue. He had always looked like that? Shit, he looked like a.... weirdly hot zombie, which wasn't a sentence he ever thought would be a part of his internal monologue. He looked him over critically, eyes slightly wide, and took a step closer.

"Gabe, don't take offense or anything, but you look like you've been murdered," he said bluntly, and couldn't help but smile slightly at his terrible joke. He glanced toward the bathroom, then at Gabe, and then shuffled a little awkwardly to his bed to pull on the crumbled sleep shirt at the foot of it. Being half naked around Gabriel seemed like it would end poorly for his sanity.

Gabriel for his part, kept his eyes off of Eli, determined that he was not going to lapse back into that uncomfortable awkwardness. He may have watched his brother wipe at the damp upon collarbones, though, before he forced eyes toward the shower and shoved a taut little smile to the surface.

"Oh? Well probably because I was." So flippant. In the tone one might use when mentioning they liked their toast wheat instead of white. Nothing to see here, folks, I'm just fine. The flash of a sharp, white-toothed smile to sell it too. He shoved the shower door aside carefully and bent to turn he water on before hauling his shirt up overhead, the muscles of back hunching with the motion.

"Go get some clothes or something," Eli said and padded back to the bed, falling forward to sprawl on it. He was so tired. He felt like he hadn't slept well for months, and in the last few nights he'd been too busy yelling at Gabe to get any sleep. He sighed, and rolled over, hugging a pillow to his chest. "Dad's out of town, so if you want you could hang out in the basement when the sun comes up. Mom never goes down there."

Eli had been so quick to forgive and forget... Gabe had expected way more of a penance then the simple acceptance he'd received. The shower was quick - even if that hot water felt like utter heaven - and the scrub he gave himself cursory and rough but damn it felt good. The mirror was fogged by the time he was done, and he used the broad flat of his forearm to wipe it clear as he could. He barely recognized the face he saw, the oddness of it HIS face but...not his face, and he felt sick. He'd read about the uncanny valley but now, well, now it seemed he was living it.

Gabe toweled himself off, flicked the light off and padded back out into his brother's room. He pulled and drawers, searching, and finally came up with a pair of soft boxer briefs to pull on, shedding the towel clinging about his waist before he stepped into the things, careful at least to keep his back to the bed.

Elijah had figured he would probably fall asleep while Gabe showered; it was something like 4 in the morning after all, and the lull of the shower was very soothing. But instead he lay awake, hugging a pillow like it was a body and staring vaguely in the direction of his window, hypnotized by the sepia-toned streetlight outside and the constant fall of slow.

It hadn't occurred to him that Gabe might not come with him when he went to college. He'd never really thought about it in the years before, when the idea of them going to New York together was the fallback subject every time they were in a car together, or walking, or lying around the house. It was what they talked about when other subjects came to a close, an endless conversation that picked up and left off seamlessly, days and sometimes weeks apart.

But he'd forgotten, really, that they were aged a year apart. It hadn't occurred to him until it happened that Gabriel would finish school before he did, and there would be a whole year of time for them to somehow fill before Elijah could skip off to New York as well. He'd been so selfish, never considering what Gabe would do. But Gabe had answered that for him when he'd left.

Nine months later, and the same problem still existed. There were three months to account for, three months in which Elijah still had to go to school, do his homework, and sit his final exams. Three months in which Gabe had to be a secret, the dead son who came back.

He heard the shower click off, and he blinked slowly and sat up. Drowsy, he stood up and pulled shut the curtains, then checked the lock on the door and slipped back into bed as Gabriel came back into the room. Eli watched his silence, eyes drooping until he dropped his towel, and then his eyes widened briefly before closing.

"Did you ever get to New York?" He said softly, voice tinged with sleep, and waited a few seconds before cautiously opening his eyes to look at his brother. Still not really clothed, but at least he wasn't naked any more. "You could go, when we get your car, and I could meet you there in May. If you want. Or you could die of boredom here for three months."

 Gabe started, had half expected Eli to be passed out or something, and glanced over one shoulder toward the bed and the familiar voice that came from it.

"No...I never made it. The wreck happened before I could even get out of the state." He padded back toward the bathroom on feet silent save for the sticky-wet way that skin slicked against hardwood floors, and flicked the light off. The room plunged into comforting, enveloping darkness, and it was only the returning sound of those footfalls that gave Eli any indication of Gabe's presence until the edge of the bed gave under the weight of a knee and the silent, dark-on-dark mass of him hovered overhead for a moment as he climbed over Eli and settled in beside him, borrowing a corner of his pillow, shifting till he found a good spot.

"I'd like that...I mean, going with you. I never wanted to go without you. I just...I had to get out of here." A soft breath of a laugh tickled at the back of Eli's neck and the side of his face. "That worked out well, huh?"

There was a heavy little silence, and a shifting beside Eli before one cool hand closed over his upper arm in a squeeze.

"I'm not ever going to be able to say I am sorry enough. But I am."

It was odd, the way that sentence cut off, like there was more to say, more that needed saying, but it just could not be found, lost somewhere between bitterness of honest regret and the comfort of silence. Gabe's hand slipped up Eli's arm, just once, before he reached to pull the covers up over them both, and wrapped an arm round his brother loosely, taking refuge in the fact it was fine since it lay over the barrier of the sheets.

"...Never shoulda left ya." Gabe mumbled, half the words lost against the pillow. "Never."

Elijah nodded absently, shivering a little at the ghost of a touch along his arm, goosebumps rising along his flesh in answer. His eyes were closed, his awareness foggy in the twilight between wakefulness and sleep, and so he made no comment as his brother's arm wrapped securely around him, other than to wriggle a little until he was comfortable, and press his arm against the bare line of Gabriel's across his waist.

"I doubt I'd have done any different," He mumbled, and it was an effort to get the words out, drowsy as he was. He huffed in the silence, and curled his legs, dragging the comforter up with them so it bunched around them both. He licked his lips, and opened his eyes a crack, fighting to stay awake.

"Nah...you woulda been more thoughtful. You were always better at that." Gabe mumbled with a warm, drowsy smile. Eli shifted against him and rolled over and Gabe's hand came to settle comfortably against the curve of his spine, just between shoulder blades. The tips of fingers traced a minuscule back and forth of the divot of it lightly over the sheets.

"'M sorry about bad touching you before," Eli said, soft like a confession, muffled against his pillow. He paused, and silence stretched between them, until he wiggled around under the covers for a moment until he was facing his brother, careful not to disturb the arm curved around him. He closed his eyes again, both because he couldn't seem to hold them open for more than a few seconds and because he didn't want to watch Gabriel's face so close. He brought his arms up, bent between them, the back of his right hand just lightly resting in the hollow at the base of his brother's throat. He quirked a faint smile. "I'm a pervert, I admit it. Show us on the doll where the bad man touched you, et cetera."

He swallowed, and languidly breathed in and out, brain again vague and on the edge of sleep. "But really. 'M sorry I made you uncomf'table," He continued, and his voice lowered until it was a whisper, his breath evening out into sleep. " I'll work on that."

 "You didn't- " Gabe began, but cut himself short. No point it reigniting that argument, no point in trying to dissuade Eli that there was nothing whatsoever bad about any of his touches. He huffed a quiet breath and shifted forward, enough to feel more of Eli's knuckles press against his throat and enough to rest his forehead lightly against his brother's. It was a struggle not to question the 'I'm a pervert' observation, not to latch on to it and use it to feed some kind of...what was this?... sick hope? Nah, better to let it go. It was just Elijah's awful attempt at sarcasm, nothing more.

"Yeah...ok." Warm bed, warm body, and the sleepy steady thud of a heartbeat were all lulling, wonderful things. Chin tucked to rub itself lightly against the the backs of Eli's half-curled fingers. "You do that."

 

 

Some hours passed, and Eli moved restlessly in his sleep, mind just briefly touching the surface of wakefulness every few hours, as he was unused to sleeping during the day and his body told him he should be up for school or study. Having Gabriel in his bed wasn't particularly unusual, although it did cage him in; when they were younger, it was common for them to fall asleep in each other's beds, and it had only stopped happening when they became too tall to continue the habit too often. But it was still dotted occasionally through their late teens, when they were too drunk to be alone or Elijah was feeling the keen sting of his father's disappointment and Gabriel couldn't be dissuaded from comforting him even in sleep.

But by the time it was midafternoon, and his mother had knocked sharply on the door three times and he'd yelled sleepily at her three times that he would be up later, they had both moved enough that they were in sort of a heap under the covers, their legs entangled and Gabriel's arm slung tight around his waist. Elijah woke slowly, and was aware of the ache of his cock before he was aware of much else including Gabe, and he groaned without a thought for keeping quiet.

He shifted, his too-warm limbs heavy and prickling with sensitivity, and turned his face slightly to bury in the pillow as his hips worked. As he moved, his brother's constricting arm drew his attention, but only vaguely, and he leaned backwards anyway, as one would to roll onto their back, and discovered that Gabriel was pressed against him entirely, including the sharp ridge of his morning problem, and he whimpered in frustration, eyes still closed. He wriggled a little, and reached down to wrap his fingers around his brother's wrist, and let out a heavy breath, Gabriel hard against the small of his back.

 It wasn't that daytime wakefulness was an impossibility for Gabe, nor even that sunlight was something that would do him significant harm. Might sting a bit, leave him feeling sick, but no bursting into flame or any of that rot. It just...wasn't his time. Made him sluggish and slow, and all too eager to surrender to a mindless state of half-wakefulness, if not outright comatose rest.

Eli moving beside him, against him was enough to rouse him the bare minimum. Why move? His arm tightened a bit in protest, face pushing forward to end up in a mess of ticklish hair that had him making whuffling noises before rooting his face away, against the nape of a warm neck instead. Something was pushing against the heavy, hard rise of his cock, constricting it ever so slightly and -ah! Wriggling...

Thoughtlessly, his fingers spread out, flat-palmed against Eli's stomach, some kind of mindless grumble buried against warm skin as his own hips curled, pushing forward thoughtlessly against the wonderful constriction. A deep, subterranean shudder welled up, crept through him, squeezing breath from lungs in a shallow, near silent gasp, and his hand lost the benefit of the friction that was keeping it in place to slide downward a good few inches.

Elijah let out a breathless, choked breath as his brother moved, and the hand in his wrist slid down those last, crucial inches that made his hips roll, a hot blush creeping up his neck to light up his cheeks. Gabriel had moved against him as well, a long, torturous and languid rock forward that he followed back, and the movement pushed a strangled moan out of his throat, and he let go of his brother's wrist to instead reach behind and grab his hip to hold them together. He licked his lips, and with his free hand he clutched at the blankets, and then shoved them away; he was too hot, toosomething; sweat sprung up on his temples and the back of his neck, and he wanted to slither out of his clothes and wrap a hand around his cock but he couldn't, the warm body behind him wouldn't let him.

It wasn't enough, none of it was enough; he pushed back, and then forward, and he whined because it wasn't enough. Thoughtlessly, he released his hold on Gabriel's hip and pressed it to his throbbing cock, uncaring that his brother's hand was already there, just needing something - friction - movement - anything to alleviate the pressure, to stop the aching, hot pleasure that dripped down his spine and drove him almost mindless.

Somewhere in the depths of bleary half-sleep, Gabe heard that moan. It was delicious, this feeling of heavy-limbed heat, the feel of someone moving against him, moving in all the right ways. He could have sworn he could feel his old pulse, the heartbeat he no longer possessed, throbbing in his cock. If you asked him right now, he would have sworn he was dreaming, swimming in some kind of wet-dream bliss he would have killed a man for waking him from.

All he could smell was Eli, all he could hear were those muffled little noises - though they seemed at once right by his ear and incredibly distant. His hand closed around a hardness that was not his own, and his fingers curled slightly with the pressure of another hand over his own. His next grinding push of hips had his arm moving, pumping slow friction against cloth and cock, a lazy undulation that was enough to drive any sane man to the crumbling edge of reason.

He could feel a jerk and contraction of the heat of the body pressed against him, and in a fleeting, cold jolt of mingled sleepy rage and thick, syrupy lust he was convinced that his enjoyment was about to be torn away from him. Teeth snapped in a throaty snarl, his free hand worming out from under them both to blindly grab hold of the dry cotton collar of the shirt Eli wore. One hard jerk was all it took to tear the thin, overworn thing, splitting seam from shoulder down to sides and then he was pushing forward with the next shove of hips, forcing Eli to rock nearly face-down with the pressure.

Possessive was something Gabriel was way too good at, something innate in a man who'd never had anything to call his own till he'd been about eight or ten....and even then distrusted the nature of how permanent anyone told him things were. He'd learned early how quick the things or people you love could be taken away. Not this time. No. Hand found its way into the slit of soft pants, even if it had to rip a button or two off to do so, and then Eli's cock was in the squeezing confine of cool fingers. Nevermind that the same time he got a grip upon him he rocked forward in another rolling push and this time, oh this time... teeth came clamping down upon the rise of Eli's shoulder, that thick tendon that ran from throat to collarbone.

Thick and slow, the blood welled up around the vice grip of needle-sharp teeth, fat droplets rolling any which way. Back against a tongue they hit like the sizzle of an electric fence, and forward to drizzle along the deep dip of a collarbone and smooth plane of Eli's chest.

He had begun trembling when a warm hand wrapped around his cock, and his fingers jerked atop Gabriel's as he sought to fuck into the loose confinement of the other's hand, a thin layer of cotton between the two of them. His head lolled back, and his lips parted on a soft, high-pitched moan. Gabriel's scent overwhelmed him, edged with the heady scent of sex now, and his breath came quicker, loud in the room, and his chest heaved with them. The other was clutching at him, and he shoved himself backward, pressing his heated skin against Gabe as best he could and cursing the garments he wore in sleep - and on cue cold air hit his chest as, with a growl that only made Eli's dick twitch, his shirt was suddenly in tatters and a perfectly, burning-rough shove had him moaning sharply into the pillow and grabbing two fistfuls of his bedsheets.

They were skin to skin now, and Eli's spread knees were on either side of one of Gabriel's, and he was slowly raising his hips in a languid roll to press back against the hard line of Gabe's cock, his eyes closed and brow furrowed, and the fire in his veins made him want to move, wanted him to tear at his skin as if that would release the tension that made him quiver. He wanted to turn over and scratch at Gabe's skin, pull him closer, demand that he quell the pressure under his skin, but his brother was at his back and also wrapping a hand - finally - around his cock without the barrier of his sleep pants in the way, and his hips stuttered, and a cry was just rising to his throat -- and Gabriel's teeth sunk into his shoulder, and his blood welled out, and his body contracted sharply, and his knuckles turned white around his bedsheets. He cried out sharply, wordlessly, although he felt like he was saying Yes or More or Fuck, and he shoved his hips back hard, and almost involuntarily reached to shove away the waistband of his sweatpants and wrap a hand around Gabriel's to pull desperately on his cock.

For his part, Gabe was acting on pure instinct at this point. Or perhaps that was being generous. He was working on pure lust, nothing but id driving him, no waking ego to messily get in the way. Those sounds, those sweetly muffled noises were nothing but kindling to an already catching fire. Blood trickled like molten honey against his tongue, down the impulsively working swallow of his throat. He'd never had a dream of feeding before, not once. Certainly not like this.  
Eli was hard as rock sugar candy under hand, in his mouth, against the insistent grind of his cock. There was nothing so perfect and every single fibre of want was dragging itself toward the end of coming, coming, becoming, drinking him down and having him out. The scent of sex and blood and Eli... sharks in a feeding frenzy had more control.

Ah, and then there was the compression of Eli's thighs against his cock and he was pushing into them twice as hard, his own hand working, the unlubricated friction of it not entirely kind in its insistence. Rough, unfinessed in the numbness of sleep. He couldn't help it, couldn't help himself as he pushed, rocked, dying slow deaths over and over again and all he wanted was to get inside. Swim the long, hot network of contracting veins and feel Eli shiver and tense and make those noises he wanted to drink out of him...

And it still wasn't enough. Eli was curling and shoving his hips back and forth, heavy, tense movements, all his muscles rigid in desperation. It hurt, almost, the dry friction on his cock, and he wished he could do something about it, wished without subject in the way that one knew there was a solution but had not the thought to apply it; and it wasn't like he could stop, because his cock was throbbing, and a thin line of precome was sliding along the ridges of his and Gabriel's fingers, but it wasn't enough. Things weren't moving fast enough - but also too fast, too much, and he felt like he was going to be consumed, or burned from the inside out, and Gabe wasn't doing enough to alleviate it, wasn't sucking his cock or pinning him down and fucking him or shoving his cock down --

Dimly, Elijah noticed the thud-thud-thud of harsh footfalls along the hall outside his bedroom, and he shivered as a particularly hard thrust from Gabriel dug between his legs and tugged at his sweatpants, and he thought, that is not my heartbeat, and then the sharp, startling-quick rapping of his mother's knuckles against his bedroom door made him freeze, and the loudness of it startled him, because the blood rushing in his ears and his and Gabriel's own panting, urgent breaths and the crinkle of bedsheets had been, however intense, quiet things. He turned his head, and the feel of his blood overflowing the dip in his collarbone and slipping down his chest, and Gabe's hand on his cock, overwhelmed him briefly again, and he thought vaguely, Gabriel needs to be naked rightnowshit, and then his mother's irate voice dragged him painfully back towards lucidity.

"Elijah John Carpenter, it is four in the afternoon and you are not sleeping the day away any longer!" She yelled, and then rapped on the door again to make sure he was awake. Elijah had gone very still, and he heard her stomp away, and he twisted where he lay and wrenched himself away from Gabriel. He scrambled to stand up, his legs almost folding under him like a newborn foal, and pivoted to stare, pale and aghast, at his brother. The rag that had been his tee shirt lay in a crumbled pile where he had been lying. He swallowed and stared at it, torn between running and - something. What? Watching the horror flood Gabriel's face? Maybe experiencing guilt to match his own would make it somehow easier, or maybe he just... couldn't help but look at Gabe a little longer. He swallowed, wide eyed, his chest still heaving, pupils still blown, his sweatpants hanging dangerously low on his hips thanks to now-useless buttons.

If Eli had been waiting for some kind of horrified or denied expression from his brother, he'd have a damn good while longer to wait for it. Denied the warm, wonderful body Gabriel had been so helpfully willing to violate in his walking sleep, he had no choice but to replace it, and the things he was doing to Eli's bed, the way he was grabbing at a pillow, crushing it under him, pushing face against it was...

There were women who clung to poles that got paid to be less erotically appealing then the sleepy sex Gabriel was currently trying to have with his brother's bed. If the sweetly frustrated expression did not kill Eli where he stood then perhaps the soft, slightly growling sounds of wanting, driving, gently painful breaths of moans might do it instead.

Either way, the only thing Eli was getting was an indecent show, not guilt, not blame or hate or anything else aside from a very vivid, very inviting demonstration of just what he was missing at the moment.

There was no getting around it, Elijah stared at his brother's impromptu porno scene on the bed, his jaw dropping almost comically at the show he was being given. Gabriel was was animalistic, a primal thing, undulating on the bed as if he couldn't control himself. Elijah shivered, the sense memory of that body, those movements concentrated on him instead of his mattress stomping through his brain, and he swayed forward, part of him (specifically the part between his legs) demanding that he forget everything and slide back into bed and under Gabriel, and throw that pillow across the room for daring to replace him. He stood rooted to the spot, swaying forward slightly, watching Gabe - who was clearly intent on getting off whether it involved Elijah or not, it seemed - and he couldn't help but feel a pang of something through his gut, hurt or longing or jealousy, and that feeling filtered through the warm haze of arousal in his gut like sunlight breaking up clouds, and he shook himself.

"Gabe -," he began, his voice barely audible and thick with some mix of bewilderment and guilt. He took a step forward, but his brother reacted exactly as if he hadn't said anything at all, which is to say he didn't react at all. Elijah waited a moment, and felt himself warming again, a few sparks in his veins, and then he shuddered, and lingered exactly long enough to drag a sleep shirt out of his drawer before he unlocked and wrenched open the door, throwing himself out into the hallway as if he was pursued by demons, which to his mind he could very well have been, and slammed the door.


	3. How Many Secrets Can You Keep

One of the few good things about winter - at least from the perspective of someone with a rather permanent case of nyctophilia- was that the nights came on early and lasted long.  Two more hours or so and Gabriel was rousing, rolling over in the delicious softness of a comfortable bed, groaning as he stretched and dragging an arm across his eyes.  His other hand reached blindly for the sheets to haul them up, but what he got a grasp on and pulled up about his chin didn't feel like a sheet. 

Thinner, too small, and some kind of weird shape... The arm draped over grey eyes lifted as they slanted open to glance down at what exactly was standing between him and perfect comfort. Slanted, that was, until they popped open wide.  A shirt, Eli's shirt from last night, if he remembered correctly - torn open and stained with something dark smeared and spattered all over the front of it.  Dark brows furrowed as Gabe pulled the thing a bit higher, sniffed... and then sat bolt-upright. 

Even bone-dry the blood smelled of Eli.  Gabe kicked covers and tangled sheets aside, twisting to examine the bed frantically.  No brother in sight, not too much other blood on the sheets, perhaps a drop here or there.  Eli's shirt still crumpled in his grip, Gabe grabbed a hold of the edge of the bed and peered over it, tipped further to glance under it.  No Eli sprawled and bleeding out on the floor, no murdered Eli tucked under the bed...  On all fours, Gabe righted himself and sat back on heels, brain in overdrive but getting nowhere.  He sucked a breath and had just opened his mouth when he caught himself.  No shouting, no calling Eli's name so that it reverberated through the whole of the house the way he used to lazily do in that way that drove his foster mom fucking mad.  Not unless he wanted two very confused parental units to come thundering up the stairs and have simultaneous heart attacks.

Any other time the thought of it would have made him grin, but just at this moment he was too frantically confused over what precisely the fuck had gone on and where his brother was to spare any shred of humor for being an evil little shit.

 _Had he hurt Eli in his sleep?  He must have done... it wasn't like Eli slept with razor blades under his freaking pillow.  But...how, or better yet, why?_   He was well aware of the how, could feel the points of those sharp teeth digging against the lining of his lower lip as his jaw clenched and unclenched as he shoved away the mounting tide of panic.  _But he hadn't been starving or anything, sure he was hungry but not so desperate to attack someone in his sleep, surely?   He hadn't shared a bed with anyone since before... but.  Well he really had no way of knowing, did he?_

Gabe launched himself forward, clumsily untangling legs he'd crushed under himself as he lurched off the bed, and thank god for the carpet that softened what would have been the loud thud of heels as his feet hit the floor.  Gabe winced and hissed a string of profanities under his breath as he began pacing, quiet as he could be but unable to stand still.

 _Stupid, stupid, STUPID.  Stupid and selfish._   Yeah, sure, he'd felt bad.  Eli had been crying, upset, and it was entirely his fault, he'd wanted to comfort him, he couldn't stand it when Eli got upset.  It was like watching someone punch a bunny, for fuck's sake.  But he shouldn't have stayed, he should have known better, should have been more cautious.  _What if he'd lashed out in his sleep?  What if he's seriously hurt Eli and his brother had only just managed to get away?_   Gabe froze, glanced down at the shirt clutched in his hand.  Torn, violently torn and bloodstained.  Oh, god what did he do?  An image of Eli, trusting, gentle Eli, sleeping peacefully away until he struck, lashing out, pinning him down, hurting him as his brother twisted in some mad panic to get away...

Gabriel crushed a noise of pure panic and frustration between his teeth as shoulders hunched, both fists coming up to bracket his temples, knock hard against his thick skull.  _No, no, no... god, no.... and Eli...Eli  would have done anything to protect him, wouldn't he?_   Even hurt and bleeding he would have probably gone running out of the room and fed his parents some bogus story about hurting himself.  _What if he was at the hospital right now?  What if he was dying?_

Gabriel was about five seconds away from being the first vampire to ever suffer a stroke. 

He had to calm down, he had to breathe.  He sank down, crouched up tightly, and rocked the way he used to do when he was a kid, when his dad had left him, when they told him he wasn't coming back from his last tour, when they came and took him off the military base, took away his home, his everything. 

 

***

Eli had never been to one of his classmates' weekend parties before. He'd heard about them; usually the only thing talked about on Monday was how awesome it had been and how hungover so-and-so had been and who had ended up hooking up with whom, and that sort of conversation tended to go in one ear and out the other with Eli. But he'd been wandering aimlessly, and had been for hours - after he'd practically run screaming from his bedroom hours before, and thankfully tugged on a tee shirt before his mother had ambushed him seconds later in the hall outside his room. He'd stood very still so that the blood wouldn't soak through his tee shirt and give his mother a heart attack, and then when she'd lectured him on wasting his life sleeping three times in succession (because he'd been particularly sluggish the last few days, and of course she hadn't known that it was because he'd been up half the night, and just thought he was being lazy) he'd slipped away to the guest bathroom and washed away the blood and stuck toilet paper on the congealing wounds in his shoulder, as if he'd cut himself shaving or something.

And his mother hadn't wanted anything with him in the end, anyway; she just didn't want him to be doing nothing.  Classic Laura.  And he'd stood around at a loss, and emptied the dishwasher and wiped down the counters twice and twitched every time it looked like she was going to go upstairs and potentially into his room, and then he'd glanced out the window and saw that the sun was going down, and he was pulling on his coat and boots and hurrying out the door before even realized why.

He'd just wandered accidentally past the party, a couple of hours later when it was still a quiet thing and people were still arriving and hauling kegs and slabs and speakers systems into the house. The venue generally changed by the week, depending on whose stock broker parents were away in New York on business that weekend. Some girl, already drunk, had stumbled out onto the front lawn and yelled at him that he was hot and that hot people should come inside. Her name was Mandy, and he'd shared three or four classes with her in the past, but she clearly had no idea who he was. And so he'd gone inside, and drank the beer she'd shoved in his face, and the beer she handed him after that as well, and by the time he'd stopped flinching every time a tall dark haired individual entered the room, he was about six drinks in and couldn't distinguish the tall dark haired individual from lampshades and most trees.

He'd pissed them off, though, he knew that much; at some point one of the guys from the football team had handed him a bong, and he'd looked at his quizzically for a moment before dropping it as if it burned him, and it had smashed and sent colored glass and marijuana flying in all directions. That was at least two drinks ago, and he was pretty sure those drinks had stopped being beers some time ago, because the liquid in the plastic cups they gave him ceased to be brown and now looked sort of red. He had shrugged and kept drinking, and the football players looked at him like they thought he should leave, but he'd shrugged at that too and had simply left the room.

 

***

Gabe wasn't sure how much time he spent like that; curled up, fists grinding hard into his forehead, one of them still clutching the soiled tatters of a shirt, rocking gently.  Back and forth, back and forth with the ebb and flow of breaths he forced to come slowly.  When he was finally able to stop, rational thoughts had begun to string each other together again. 

_Eli wasn't dead.  He couldn't be.  Go look outside._

Cramped legs straightened and carried him to the window to tug the curtains aside.  Laura's hideous, hateful minivan still in the driveway just as it had been last night.  She would have followed any ambulance to the hospital, right?  Maybe.  He glanced around the room again.  No other blood loss, nothing but a shirt with a little bit of rust coloring its surface.  If he had really done mortal harm to his brother there would have been tons of the stuff, everywhere, and Eli wouldn't have been able to lie that wound away.

Gabe wandered away from the window slowly, blinking.  He felt like he'd just gone twelve rounds with Tyson, eyes stinging like they were ready to swell shut and every part of him aching to the point of exhaustion.  Eli wasn't dead.  He couldn't be.  He was just...Jesus, maybe he was just downstairs studying or eating dinner or socializing like a good son and here HE  was freaking right the fuck out like some kind of undead lunatic. 

_Everything was ok, everything had to be ok._

Gabe tossed the shirt upon the bed and shook himself slightly.  Get a grip.  And get a shower... _fuck, what was that?  What_....He stopped and glanced down.  Was still wearing just the borrowed pair of underwear he'd pulled on last night but...  One hand tugged at the front of them, pulled it away from skin and crumpled it between fingers.  Yeah, crumpled it; the fabric stiff beyond any starch imaginable between fingers.  He paused, sniffing the air and-

"Oh.  OH.  Oh god."

_Sex._

_That had been a dream, right?_

 

***

Eli was beginning to think he should stop drinking by the time he found himself back out the front of the party house, drink number something in his hand, staring vaguely as the football player stalked outside in and his direction followed by a couple of other guys and some mildly scared looking girls, who were all trying to hold them back. Teenagers were weird, he thought dimly, and then he'd been pointed out and the owner of the bong - and probably the weed, too - got in his face and started yelling, and it was all heavily slurred and stank of beer and mostly nonsensical, besides that he gathered it was about the bong because it involved the word "chronic", and he had the internet and wasn't stupid, come on.

 He simply stared, bleary-eyed, and stumbled back when the yelling became a hard shove to the shoulders, and his drink went flying from his hand to land in the grass.

"What's your problem?" He responded, but his tongue was heavy and too slow, and they didn't hear anyway because everything around them was suddenly loud as people yelled and everyone came streaming out of the house to watch, like they were gladiators in the coliseum or something.  He looked around, bewildered, and felt vaguely like he was probably going to barf at some time soon, and then turned around just in time for a fist to swing at his face and send him careening back to land in the manicured garden that someone's mother had probably worked hard on. He groaned, and reached up to press two fingers to the socket of his eye with a wince.  The punch had hurt, but the throbbing after hurt more, and his head was beginning to pound with the beat of the horrendous dance track that blared from inside.

A blurry, indistinct figure was on him then, and the guy - whoever he was; Eli would maybe recognise him if he could see straight - had grabbed him by the collar and smacked him in the mouth before he was yelling again, this time about the expense of 'chronic' (more Googling was needed for that one) and who was going to replace the bong he'd broken?   He groaned in response, and had opened his now-bloody mouth to respond when the guy was hauled bodily off him by two of his friends, and Eli sat up in time to watch him being dragged, literally kicking and screaming, back into the house. When he didn't follow, the disappointed crowd dispersed, and he spat out blood and flopped back into the dirt, the stars above wheeling and spinning enough to make his stomach churning.

 

***

Back at the house, the shrill landline phone rang, and his mother - who had been stacking the dishwasher and wiping down already spotless counters - snagged it off the wall.

" _Hello_?" She said, with perfect sunny housewife tone, but then her face - including, for some reason, the completely unneeded sunny housewife smile - dropped, and her voice raised.

 " _Elijah? Where are you?" Pause. "Have you been drinking_?"

Her voice steadily rose until she was yelling, and she had stalked over to the foot of the staircase in the foyer as Eli slurred into the phone.

 " _I can't understand you. Elijah, how much have you had to drink? You're not even legally allowed, and you know how your father and I feel about - where are you? Why is it so loud there?" A pause. "Who is Mandy Fuller? Why are you at her house?_ " Another pause. " _Where is her house? I'll come and get you, and you are grounded for the rest of the - Elijah?_ " Silence. " _Eli? Elijah, you better not have hung up on your mother! Ugh._ "

Elijah winced, and hung up his phone before she could yell any more or somehow track his phone's location - which he had no doubt she could and had done before - and shoved it back in his pocket. He sighed. His mother wouldn't know where Mandy lived, which was both a blessing and a curse, because he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be able to stumble his way home anytime soon. He licked his lips, winced, and swallowed the small amount of blood that was trickling into his mouth. Shit.

 

***

Gabe's freshest out of control train of thought was swiftly derailed by the shrieking harpy immediately downstairs.  Hand still holding his drawers, his head snapped up and he edged for the door, listening intently. 

_Elijah. Have you been drinking?  Who is Mandy Fuller?_

Alive, well and raising hell.  Gabe was grinning like a maniac.  Fuck those crusty underwear and whatever the shit had happened during the day.  He couldn't shuck the drawers fast enough.  Eli's clothes were way too tight - but fuck it.  The Carpenters had clearly wasted no time getting rid of all his old things after he'd been presumed dead.  Fuck it.  Gabe wedged himself into a too tight pair of slightly too long jeans and a shirt that was no different before grabbing his own hoodie and coat, and across the hall and out the window of his old room he went.

Mandy Fuller.  Yeah, he knew her.  Astounding that Eli had ended up at her place, but ok.  More astounding that he couldn't make his way home since she wasn't all that far.  Hell, in this town, no one was.  It was a scant few minutes of some hurried walking before Gabe found himself outside Mandy's house with its blaring, bad club music.  He hesitated, hands in pockets, realizing he couldn't just go diving into that mess.  Though how much fun would it be to just turn up like a ghost in the middle of everything? 

Nah, better not. 

He reached up, dragged his hood up overhead and tugged it down as far as the deep pocket of it would go, tucking his chin as he stalked toward the house, veered around it and headed for the backyard. Call it a hunch, though it felt like something stronger.  He just went with where his gut pulled and sure enough there was his brother, half curled in Mrs. Fuller's garden, bleeding and struggling to sit up. 

"Fuck.  Eli!"  Gabe's hands were out of their deep dig into his pockets as he flew forward and landed hard on his knees in the snow, pulling at his brother, helpfully wrenching him up till they were both on their feet and he had Eli, wrapped in one arm to hold him steady, his other hand grasped at his face as his head bobbled like one of those ridiculous car toys. 

"Eli, fuck.  What.  WHY DID YOU.  Never mind, look, who fucking did this?"

 

Eli didn't know how long he continued to lay in the snow after he'd hung up on his mother, his eyes drifting closed and the blood cooling on his face slowly. _At least my head isn't in snow_ , he thought vaguely; Mrs Fuller had clearly kept the snow off her garden, probably at the same time she'd put all those weird cover things on her plants to stop them freezing. May as well just leave the things on them all year in Connecticut, he thought. Fucking freezing hellhole. _Shit, I'm drunk._

But then there was a familiar voice somewhere to his right - or left - somewhere, anyway - and Gabe was dragging him to sit and then stand, and the world was spinning hilariously around him, and he clung pathetically to his brother's lapel and buried his cold face in his neck, swallowing another half mouthful of blood as he fought the fresh urge to spew everywhere. He groaned, staggering.

"Gaaaa-aaaabe," he whined, and opened his eyes, immediately regretted it, and pressed a hand to his face. "Gabe. I'm so drunk, Gabriel, so d - ow, face -" He winced, and then tugged his brother closer, and stood very still for a moment. He slowly opened his eyes, careful not to sway or turn his head, and squinted at Gabriel. "I don't know who punch - punched me. Twice. I dropped a bong, 'cause who would - it was fucking - marijuana, as if 'm not the like most public poster - posterboy 'f Christian virtue ever."

He swayed slightly, and had to close his eyes again so he didn't puke or pass out; he waited until he'd come to a stop again, leaning on his brother, and then opened his eyes again to squint at the side of Gabriel's head from his vantage point against his shoulder.

 "Sooo I dropped it, 'n'it smashed, soooo they punched me. Twice. Do I have a black - black eye? Feel like I should, but - snow, y'know, so no swelling, you smell nice."

 

Poor Eli was a mess. What the hell had brought this on? Gabe had always beg and plead and drag him kicking and screaming to parties, let alone wheedle him into drinking with him. And here he was, face busted and so drunk he was making standing look like hard work. Gabe pulled the edge of his hoodie sleeve out of the shelter of the sleeve of his coat and over his knuckles before using it to wipe as gently as he could manage at Eli's bloody face.

"Oh yeah, you're the fuckin altar boy role model of good behavior, huh?" He replied dryly, dipping his head under his hood to try to get a better look at Eli as his brother clung to him, wobbling. "Yeah, man. I think you got a shiner- snow or no snow."

He caught Eli's upper lip with his thumb and gently pushed it upward, baring teeth.

"Think you still got all your choppers though. Good thing too, mom would have your fucking head on a plate you go wasting all that expensive dental work." That good natured, half tilt of a grin slanted upward under the shadows of his hood.  "What, you think since I been gone now you need to raise hell for the both of us in my place?"

His tone was teasing, it was hard to be mad with Eli when he was hurt, or drunk....or hurt and drunk. The person who had hurt him on the other hand...

Gabe glanced toward the house and one arm tightened around his brother.

"Look, don't call me Gabe here, ok? Don't say my name." Come on, I'm gonna get you home, but we got a stop to make first."

He didn't give Eli time to protest or think about it as he steered him toward the house and back into the crowd inside through the back door. The group that had hustled Eli outside were still standing in the kitchen, drinking and shouting conversation at each other over the music. Gabe hadn't really thought through how he was going to find who'd done this.  Hell, he wasn't thinking much at all at the moment, but the way the guys glanced up when Eli staggered back into the house, the expressions on their faces was more than enough of a clue for Gabe, who left his brother weaving on his feet by the door as he shoved his way through the crowd in a beeline for the group, zeroing in on the one big guy with reddened knuckles.

Careful to keep his head half tilted down, So only his chin and the thin, chill slice of his grin was showing - completely at odds with the rage seeping off him in waves, throwing the dude he was bearing down on right off when Gabe shoved a thumb over his shoulder to jut back at Eli behind him.

"Hey, you do that?"

"Yeah, man, that mothe-"

The clack of teeth bit that word in half as Gabe cold-cocked the bigger guy so hard his neck snapped back and he went down like a ton of bricks, collapsing against the counter behind him before slumping on the floor, all his friends scattering backward in surprise. Gabe shoved a finger out, swept it across all of them.

" _You cock sucking sons of rich bitches don't FUCK with Eli! I swear to god I will rip each of your dicks off and make a goddamned necklace out of them if you touch him again._ "

 

Eli waited docilely by the door for about ten seconds before he realized it was a poor choice, and he should probably get himself and Gabe out of there before the cops were called, which was the best case scenario, and accounted for both the eventuality of himself getting punched again and Gabe being recognized as not being dead.  He stood, clutching the wall and willing the linoleum floor to stay where it was and not leap up to hit him in the face as his brother stalked away, and his still-blurry vision told him that yep, the thin dark line that his brother had morphed into as he walked away had in fact been headed toward the blur of red and gold across the room that bore a striking resemblance to the blur of red and gold that had tried to ruin his face.

He sighed, which came out more as a groan, pushed away from his trusty, vomit-deterring wall and started across the room, hoping vaguely that he got there after Gabe inevitably threw a punch (because he was Gabe and Eli was still not an idiot, come on) but before the other guys got a few in. Of course, people didn't really move aside when it was a stumbling Elijah trying to make his way politely through them; they knew he wasn't going to hit them if they didn't move, and unfortunately Gabe tended to have that look about him that made him seem like someone who would start shit if you didn't get out of his way.

 

There was the telltale apple-thrown-at-a-wall sound of a punch being thrown, and then a chorus of yells that would have sounded more appropriate at a football game and not a Connecticut kitchen, and the people who had been nonchalantly ignoring his attempts to get past him were suddenly very concerned with being not in the room. He breathed a sigh of relief, and stagger forward enough to wrap a hand around the crook of Gabe's elbow, tugging him back.

 "Ga - uh," He paused. Not meant to be Gabe, right. Right, okay. "Uh - hey, uh - let's go somewhere else before I - heave all over everything and someone calls the cops. _The cops who would be interested to see you_."

 

The guy on the floor was just coming to, groaning and squirming enough that Gabe's attention latched back onto him again and Gabe was hauling his fist back and starting to lean down to smash the guy across the face again when Eli came stumbling up and got a hold of his elbow.  He straightened, but not before the guy on the floor under him had squinted up, got a half a good look at him and freaked right the fuck out.

"Holyshit...holyshit, it's you!"

Gabe's stomach dropped like a stone. 

"Dammit."  He whipped around, turning his face away, getting a grip on Eli and half-herding, half-hauling him toward the door, shoving people out of the way using his drunken brother as a kind of battering ram.  "Heads up, clear a path, move it or he'll puke..."

Amazing how fast that last one got people the hell out of the way.  Gabe slammed the sliding door shut behind them once they were outside and steered Eli through several back gardens before cutting toward the other side of the block, just in case that asshole's friends got any idea about following them. 

"Eli, what the hell?  I woke up and you were gone and I thought for a second you were dead, I mean, you scared the living piss out of me.  And you're at Mandy Fuller's house??  Wasted as hell and with the snot beat out of you.  What gives?"

 

Eli barely had time to close his mouth (not that his reflexes were much to brag about at the moment) before the two of them were practically running for the door, and Eli made a mental note to never be this drunk again, at least around Gabe, who seemed consistently intent on throwing him around like a sack of potatoes until he either passed out or barfed. He'd be sure to aim for his brother if the latter came to fruition, at any rate.

"Ugh, Gabe, slow the fuck down," he slurred, and cringed away from the crowds of people he was being forced through, until they were suddenly back out in the cold and he was taking in deep lungfuls of (hopefully) cleansing air, and although they were still hurtling away from the party as if they were being shot at, he could at least mostly do it on his own power now.

Once they were a couple of houses away (and he could slow down and, by proxy, not puke as a result of opening his face hole), he tugged at his brother to slow down, and pressed a hand to his face, the streetlights around him tilting in a way that didn't make him feel much like he was going to survive the night.

"God, you are the most awful ball of movement to be around while blind drunk and dizzy, do you know that?" He responded conversationally, and then let his hand drop from his face, again immediately regretted it, and stumbled sideways to lean on Gabriel again.

"I didn't get invited to her house or anything, if you're feeling - threatened or something," He said, taking deep steadying breaths. "I was just walking past, minding.... ing my own business, and then there - there was a beer in my hand, and now I'm drunk."

He stopped walking suddenly, and squinted past Gabe for a moment before pointing in that direction. "We're - c'mon, we're going that way, I'll go h - home tomorrow."

 

"What?  Oh...sorry."  Came the distracted mumble of an apology from Gabe, who was still glancing back over his shoulder as he slowed his pace obligingly.  One arm wrapped itself around Eli's shoulders as his brother leaned into him, Eli's neck settling comfortably into the crook of his elbow, the rest of his arm draping itself loosely so his hand dangled against his brother's chest. Content that they were not being followed, Gabe finally drug his attention back in the direction they were traveling, sparing the occasional glance at his sibling. 

It took a moment for Eli's accusation to sink in, and Gabe's dark brows shot up once it did, focus jerking toward his brother.

"What?  Threatened?  No."  He blustered, amusingly aggravated by such a suggestion,  "Christ, Eli.  Mandy's just an ex, and you're - uh.  Yeah no.  Maybe just jealous that I didn't get to spend the night boozing it up with friends. I mean, yeah...you get to have all the fun."

The words came tumbling out one on top of the other in an attempt to hide the fact that his brain had instantly snapped from the idea that he might be jealous of Eli hanging with Mandy to the idea that he might be jealous of Mandy hanging with Eli.  He really didn't need to go there just now.

He held up when Eli came stumbling to a halt, and changed direction with him unquestioningly.

"Heh.  Yeah ok.  You really aren't gonna have fun when you gotta face mo- uh, Laura again.  I'm not going to say that you're going to get off with a warning, not looking like that, but better to be sober and beat to heck than drunk in front of her, I'll tell you that.  She'll be shitting kittens all night as it is.  I can't believe you called her.  If she'd showed up at that house you wouldn't ever be able to show your face in this town again with the scene she would have made.  You'd go down in history as that kid whose mom got everyone in the senior class arrested for partying that one time."

Gabe was being unusually loquacious, trying to fill an ever widening void all his unanswered questions about that day were creating between him and his brother, who for his part, seemed blissfully, drunkenly unperturbed about any of it.

"Where are we headed?  You should really have a lie down, get washed up a bit.  Maybe have a barf and some soda or something?"  Nurse Gabe was kicking in.  It was easy to lose himself in fretting over Eli, the only person he trusted enough to invest any amount of caring in.  It couldn't have been easy, to be the sole recipient of all that fierce, clumsily tender affection in all the years they spent growing up together, but Eli had borne it well, never made Gabe feel bad for how much he cared, never pushed away his protective, sometimes too zealous attempts at affection. 

 

Eli snorted and ignored Gabe's attempt at mothering him, simply reaching up to wrap a hand around the wrist that dangled around his neck and stumbling in the direction of what counted for the 'downtown' in Westport (which consisted of a few colonial buildings, several diners, and motels that existed mostly for the purpose of feeding and housing those who had the misfortune of having to stop in Westport on their way to New York). It was the motels he was headed for; going home didn't seem like a particularly clever plan at the moment, and besides after last night he wasn't totally sure he wanted to look at his bed for a while. And he and Gabe needed to... talk.  Or something.  Probably.

"'M not going home," he finally responded by way of answer, and they lumbered, swaying thanks to Eli's weight and general lack of being able to walk straight, out of an alley onto Main Street. There was no one around this time of night. Connecticut shut its doors and closed its curtains at around 8pm as a general rule, High School keggers notwithstanding. A sedan drove past, followed by the dreamy silence of white noise.

 

"Yeah, I got it. Not going home tonight." Gabe replied amicably enough, perfectly happy now that they were clear of the party and most of the familiar neighborhoods to let Eli set the pace. Drunk and slightly weaving though it may be.

 

"Gabe - Gabriel,"  Eli said conversationally, thankful to see the bright Westport Motel sign down the road. He swallowed thickly, grateful that the cold air on his face had seemingly made his nausea pass, and pulled his brother to a slightly unsteady stop. He leaned back against a tree, head tilted back against the bark as he looked at Gabriel through half-lidded eyes.

 

"You're bi - bisexual, right?" He blinked slowly, eyes hazy in the tungsten light of a streetlight above them. He licked at the cut on his lip. "You were with Mandy, an' - a couple - couple 'f others, I d'n know, girls." Eli frowned, his expressions open thanks to how drunk he was, easily readable as they crossed his features. His brow furrowed. "But you can't jus' be - I mean.  Maybe.  Don't - don't be offended.  I just thought - I'm not a girl. And last - you - well...  You were half - half asleep, I guess, 'n I was too.  But 'm not... a girl."

 

The lazy warmth of the hand that wrapped itself round Gabe's wrist wasn't anything to complain about. He pulled up to a halt however, when Eli put the brakes on, and unwound his arm from round his brother's shoulders as the taller boy backed himself against a tree. Gabe's comfortable ghost of a bemused smile vanished completely with Eli's question, however, and he glanced away, pale eyes seeking out anything- the top of the tree Eli was leaning against, the motel sign in the near distance, his own feet in the snow- anything to keep from looking at Elijah giving him unintentional bedroom eyes and asking incredibly pointed questions about his sexual preferences.

"Yeah I KNOW you're not a girl, you douche." Wow that came out a lot harsher then he meant it to, and the generous line of Gabe's mouth tightened in frustration as he winced at his own obvious defensiveness.  Shoulders slumped as he half-repressed a groan and shoved hands roughly into the pockets of his jeans.

"No I mean. Look you don't have to keep saying that. I am perfectly aware of the fact that you and I are both ‘how they say’ dudes, alright?  I got it.  Quite clear on those facts.  Two dicks, one for each of us.  Yes."

Yeah this conversation was going well. Gabe rolled eyes heavenward, sucking a breath before forcing himself to look at his brother. Unfortunately the second that he did, all that air just huffed out of him uselessly again, void of the words he'd meant for it to carry. How to explain? How did you just out and say _'no, well, maybe, but it's really for you and it's kinda always been that way but I'm too chicken shit and this whole situation is too fucked up for me to do anything about it and yeah I asked you to kiss me and maybe I had a wet dream about you today but..._ '  Wait.

Dark brows drew together slowly as Gabe gradually regained control of his features as well as his train of thought.

"Wait, wait. What DID happen today, Eli? I don't remember anything...I mean I had a dream that was uh, yeah, happy I guess.  But all it was, WAS a dream.  And then I woke up tonight and you are gone and your bloody shirt was in my hand and..." Eyes narrowed at the adorable, if blood smeared and beat to hell drunk leaning against the tree in front of him. "Are you trying to tell me we did something?  While I was unconscious?  That WASN'T a dream??  And you.... And..."

It was sickening, the sense of helplessness combined with not being able to tell what was real and what was imaginary.  Gabriel stalked forward, dragging hands from pockets and reaching out lightning-quick to grab at his brother, catch his coat by the collar and yank it open, shove it down one shoulder and pull the collar of his shirt aside to peer inside at the rise of one shoulder, and then the other, freezing at the sight of dried clumps of kleenex clinging to Eli's skin with the paste of dried brown blood. He brushed the little tears of tissue aside with his thumb and groaned, forehead rocking forward against Eli's collarbone for a moment at the sight of a perfect crescent bite mark branded in a deep scab across the rise of his brother's shoulder.

"Oh, _fuck_."

 

Eli stood helpfully still as his brother apparently strip searched him, his arms hanging limply and his gaze off to the side, pressing his lips together.  Great conversation they were having.   Really proactive.  He sighed, eyes dropping briefly to the ground and holding his breath to quell the urge to cry or yell or smack Gabe in the head for being such a goddamn help.  He didn't really know where he wanted this conversation to go, or what he'd planned for it - in fact, earlier in the day he'd pretty much promised himself he was never going to mention this to Gabe ever, but with his brother being so sweet to him, and.... he never could keep his mouth shut for long anyway.  There were too many unresolved questions from the afternoon, and with liquid courage in his veins he couldn't find it in him to have a complex moral argument with himself about it.

Then again, Gabriel sure as hell wasn't cooperating. He hadn't seen his brother look this offended since..... well, actually the night before, when Eli had accidentally groped him.  His face fell.  Nothing quite like a common factor, he supposed.

"Forget it," He finally mumbled, and took the opportunity to push Gabe's hands away and slip from between him and the tree, immediately stumbling and then righting himself. He was aiming for nonchalant, but the kicked puppy expression on his face said otherwise, and being drunk tended to make him pretty obvious.

"You don't have to be a dick about it. I know I'm a fucking guy, fuck."

Eli weaved a little as he headed in the direction of the motel, but he told himself he was no worse than Gabe had been on occasion in the past - and he told himself his face didn't look like he was a teenage girl who'd just been broken up with. He was pretty sure that was a pipe dream, though, so he frowned fiercely to attempt to cover the tears gathering hot behind his eyes, and that made him petulantly angry, anyway.

"And yeah," he tossed over his shoulder, because getting in the last word was apparently very important to drunk Eli... although it had seemed pretty important to sober Eli last night as well, come to think of it. "You seemed pretty bisexual with your hand around my _cock_ today, just fyi."

 

Gabe, for his part - after surviving a few harsh internal, self-inflicted mental punches to the gut - had just been lifting his head, mouth opening on a heartfelt apology when Eli was suddenly shoving him roughly away.  They both went stumbling, mirrored looks of hurt contorting features.  Eli may as well have smacked him for as cowed and startled as Gabriel looked.

"Eli wait..."  He went trailing after the livid drunk, feeling sick, something sour in the back of his throat.  "Look wait, fuck.  Eli!"

That last comment tossed over his brother's shoulder stopped him short a second time, though only for a second before he was seeing red, rushing forward.  Not that he had to be in any hurry to catch the stumbling, mean drunk.  It was just that sudden, hot white flash of rage that slipped his hold before he could stop it.  He hit Eli's back hard in a tackle, and the both of them went tumbling into the thin crust of snow over the frozen ground, landing with audible whumps as breath rushed out convulsively.  It didn't faze Gabe, not in the least, as he wrestled his stupid sibling on the ground, the pair of them a flailing ball of limbs and half-grunted, unintelligible shouts. 

"HEY!"  Gabe finally got Eli's arms pinned down, leaning heavily upon their wrists, grip tighter probably then it needed to be, though ask him if he cared as he glared down at his petulant sibling, holding down the rest of him in a straddle of hips. "I'M NOT fucking bisexual or whatever you think, you magnificent douche.  I never thought about touching another guy, alright!  I'm not... I ..." 

The heat of his argument died out quickly, righteous fires burned hot but they had a short fuse.  Gabe was hanging his head, clenched hands convulsing in their grip of Eli's wrists before they released as he sat back, cradling his face in both hands, groaning in frustration behind their shield before they dropped limply against thighs still straddling his brother, useless in defeat.  Why even fucking fight it?  Not with what Eli was telling him he'd done in his goddamned sleep.  Still, he kept eyes shut tight for the time being, it was easier to get out if he wasn't looking directly at that beaten, angry, pitiful face below him.

"I'm not… I mean yeah, alright fine.  I'm bi… or whatever."  The words were getting caught against the back of his throat, welling up, too scared to take the plunge off the tip of his tongue.  "But I'm...I mean, this whole thing, I didn't know until you, alright?  Its kinda always been for you."

He couldn't help it, and another pained, embarrassed sound escaped him as his head rocked to one side, fingers reaching to pinch at the bridge of his nose, put some barrier between him and everything else.

"Fuck, I'm sorry... I don't... look I know, I'm sorry.  I had no idea what happened was real, I mean...alright so I got you to kiss me the other night when you were all loopy.  But I thought I had died, ok?  This was a second chance, and I just, I didn't want to have that regret anymore, and I figured it was harmless, and maybe you wouldn't even remember.  Fuck, fuck...."

Gabe was working himself into another panic, the familiar tone of it hitching in his voice, in the way the words were flowing too fast right along the swelling river of thoughts, soon to become a tsunami. 

 

Eli hadn't been expecting to be more or less crash-tackled to the ground, but when he found himself with a face full of snow (not that worst thing that had happened to his face this evening) he wasn't all that surprised, and so he only briefly struggled. By the time Gabe was a warm weight pinning him down, he huffed shortly and stilled, watching his face with a slightly detached interest, his mouth pressed into a thin line.

This was... not what he had expected. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but hearing that his brother was straight and he was the exception was not it. It seemed almost perverse, in a way - besides obviously being incest and therefore, y'know, super perverse - but somehow sordid, that he was the one exception. Like he was wrong or something, like he'd done something to lead Gabe into temptation.

He watched Gabriel for a long moment, the silence stretching between them. Perhaps there was something to his delirious, half-formed theories about a risen demon to balance the Morning Star, but Eli just didn't have the part in the story he had thought he did - wasn't a prophet like his namesake, but only a vessel for sin. He swallowed, jaw clenching, the burning behind his eyes returning with a vengeance.

"What does that make _me_?" He said, almost a whisper, and his eyes skirted to the side to stare at a nearby streetlight. It was too bright to stare at and it burned his eyes, but that helped in a way, gave him an excuse for the waterworks. "I'm a _Christian_. I believe the _Bible_. And I still..."

 

"What?"  Gabe glanced up sharply, flabbergasted.  _'What about me?_ '  wasn't exactly the response one expected immediately following one's soul-blackening confession like that with all its filthy little implications like: what had all that affection, all that closeness really been about, what did any of it mean, and how long had this been going on?  Instead of the inevitable disgust and betrayal he'd been expecting here was Eli laying in the snow freaking out about _'What about him?_ '  And his stupid religion... 

Gabe looked horrified.

"What the fuck _about_ you?"  He asked sharply, rising to stand over the mewling, drunken man-child. "You think cause your fucked up foster brother has some kind of a sick crush on your stupid goddamned face that somehow it makes YOU a bad person?  What the everliving f- "  Gabe drew himself up short, shaking his head, forcing himself to stop, stop and think.  "Look, you're wasted drunk, you're not even making sense.  Just forget about it.  We can talk tomorrow, you aren't thinking.  Maybe if I'm lucky you'll forget this too and I can just go back to pretending I'm a normal human being or something like that."

He reached down to grab a hold of the front of Eli's coat and try to haul him up onto his feet.

 

Elijah was half way through forming some kind of response to his brother's yelling when the tack changed, and he was being hauled to his feet and accused of being 'just drunk' (that Eli, forever drunk and having his autonomy taken away from him by his stupid fucking high handed brother), and he got half-way to standing before he was twisting backwards, and he ended up on ass in the snow again.

" _Don't_ \- " He started, and his face crumbled, every fucked up moment from the last week rising up and once to smack him in the face - his death brother, his dead vampire brother, breaking into the church and making out on the altar and groping up and waking up in bed with his brother at his back, and moaning, and getting bitten - and he pressed a snow-covered hand to his face, hot tears overflowing and sliding, scalding, down his face.

"Why are you - why couldn't you have _talked_ to me about this?!" He wailed, and hated himself for being the pathetic crying drunk girl, and his father's voice in his head hated him too. " _I just wanted to t-talk to you about this, I just - why do you have to_ -"

He swallowed, and all the things he wanted to say were jumbled and tumbling over themselves in his mouth, and he knew he wasn't making any sense but he couldn't say it, he couldn't just say that he was just as bad as Gabe, was just as far gone about his brother, had probably always been.

"I don't want to feel like - I can't feel like this about my _brother_ I just - you - _I can't do this_."

 

Eli twisted, pitched into the snow, leaving Gabe grasping to catch him but missing, leaving him standing there, bent awkwardly, hands still out as Eli began to...oh no.  Began to cry. 

Gabe's heart twisted in his chest, the rotten, useless husk of it twisted like a dishtowel being wrung out to dry.  He couldn't take Eli's tears, he never could.  They killed him, drop by drop like acid eating away his insides, and he still wore the scars of all the ones he'd wiped away when they were kids.  Now he was the one causing them.  He dropped to his knees between Eli's bent ones, hands hovering, unsure of where to touch, if it was even welcome anymore.  God, this was killing him, why, why did he have to be this fucking way?  He should have never come back.  Should have never let any of this get the best of him.  Sure Elijah would have been bummed out for a while, but he would have gotten over it.  Graduated, gotten the hell out of this town and been happy.  Instead he was sitting the snow, beat up and crying.

"No, no....Eli no, please don't cry.  Eli, please don't cry..."  That same soft begging, same tone as the night before, same as years and years before that.  Soothing, anxious, aching.  " _Please_."

He was chewing his lower lip fit to gnaw the thing right off, hands still hovering before they settled upon his brother's raised knees, rubbed lightly.  Perfectly safe, right?

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry....I'm awful alright?  Please don't cry, Eli.  Look...I...I can go away, alright?  I'll just go away.  You're not a bad person, you never have been.  I am...and maybe what I did just...confused you?  I don't want...I can't stand you being like this.  I can't....wait."  He paused a second, letting it all process, blinking in headlights as a car passed them by, distinctly slowing down a bit to get a look at the drunk kids fighting in the snow before it kept moving on. 

"You...you feel this way?  What do you - do you mean you?"  Gabe's head was spinning, hell, his world was spinning and he had no idea which way was up any longer.  All he knew was that it was cold, starting to sleet softly, and that Eli was sitting in the snow, crying, and he'd do just about anything to get the kid inside and clean him up and stop this mess.  He shook off the questions he was about to ask and gave Eli's knee a gentle shake.

"Hey.  We can talk, ok?  Let's just get inside and we can talk.  I'm sorry, alright?  Please don't cry."

 

Elijah slowly sniffed through his tears, and rubbed a tired, snow-wet hand across his face so he could look at Gabe. True to form, his brother looked like he was just about ready to cut his own arm off if it meant he could be anywhere else. Eli hated crying. His dad hated it, Gabe hated it. All it did was make everyone embarrassed and disappointed in him. He sniffed again, wiping his eyes.

"You won't talk t' me," He said weakly, and paused so he could hiccup, then continued. "You'll just get all weird and tell me 'm drunk and don't know what I'm - hkk - doing. Except today, 'cause I guess you didn't know what you were doing."

Slowly, Eli clambered to his feet and then offered Gabe a hand. Nonchalantly ignoring his brother's questions, as per normal - because he didn't often have answers, and mostly those answers were things he hadn't strictly admitted to himself yet. With one hand, he pulled his coat tighter around himself and then shivered, most of him damp or soaking thanks to the impromptu wrestle through the snow that the two of them had taken. He watched the fat, wet sleet as it fell around them, some of his senses coming back to him and informing him that he should be deeply embarrassed at the tantrum he'd just thrown.

"We're going to the motel, by the way. Which it now occurs to me is quite - um - awkward at this particular junction."

 

If Gabe had any inkling of how thickheadedly mislead to the point of almost willfully stupid his beloved brother was he might well have added a second black eye to his face.  Fortunately, for them both, Gabe was almost as clueless as his woebegone sibling.  It wasn't that Gabe hated crying, he just hated Eli doing it...and didn't hate _him_ for doing it.

Regardless, Eli's tears slowed and he rose, Gabe's head tilting back to watch him stand before he gladly accepted the hand offered down to him, straightening himself.  He probably should have let go of Eli's grip as soon as he was upright, but he kept it, careful with his grasp, less pushy.

"Look, I'll try, alright?  It's not exactly easy talking to you lately.  You've been kinda freaking out about everything."  Because having your brother back from the dead and then having some kind of weird sexual tension suddenly coming to a head with him was totally normal things not worth freaking out over, right?  Gabe glanced both ways as Eli steered them both across the street toward the motel a half a block down.

"Hey, if you turn up in that motel's office looking like you do, they are gonna think something's up and call the cops.  This is still Westport, yeah?  Everyone up in everyone's junk.  Give me your wallet, wait outside and I'll get a key."  He paused for a second, weighing Eli's last words.  They stung, to be sure, but who could have blamed him?  "I'll just get you the room and get you situated and then be on my way if you want.  We can talk later.  I really don't ever want to do that again - molest you in your sleep or whatever that was."

Gabe was silent until they got up to the curb in front of the motel, where he stalled a second, looking down at his own feet.

"I just want us to be ok, Eli.  I just want us to be good."

 

Eli very much considered arguing and telling Gabe he was a dumbass if he thought he was any  more likely to get a room, considering he was dead and everyone knew it, but it occurred to him when the words were rising in his throat that perhaps being something other than human had some kind of advantage in these sorts of situations, and he should probably stop proving his brother right by being a difficult asshole.

"My brother is back from the dead and we keep... pinning each other to things," He said dryly in response to Gabriel's earlier jibe, but obediently stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall, his expression carefully blank. His own turn of phrase had created a rather vivid mental image, and coupled with the fact that they were going into a motel.... Yeah okay, he was full of questionable decisions this evening, there was no denying it. He licked his lips.

"If by molest me in my sleep you mean essentially the opposite, then sure," He mumbled, half hoping that Gabe wouldn't hear him and half praying he did, because he wasn't likely to be this candid again anytime soon. He cleared his throat, blood rushing to his face. "And we're brothers, Gabe, we're never going to be not okay."

 

One half of Gabe's mouth turned up in a wry attempt at a smile, grateful at least that Eli had calmed down and was swiftly regaining his usual, gentler demeanor. He released Eli's hand as his brother lent against the wall outside the motel, though he kept it out expectantly, waiting for the wallet, which Eli seemed to have forgotten all about. He could be forgiven the lapse, seeing as how he was wading his way toward the shores of sobriety and seemed to be lost in all kinds of thought.

Nonetheless. Gabe only had about five dollars left to him, and no way was he leaving his ID with the motel clerk. Taking matters into his own hands, he stepped forward, reached around behind Eli, and slid a hand into the back pocket of jeans where his brother always kept his wallet, pick pocketing him with a sly grin, backing just out of reach once he had the leather billfold between fingers. It was a teasing mimicry of the frisking Eli had given him last night, but so much more effective...and less arousing. Unless of course all it took was a quick invasion of space and a brief game of grab-ass to get Eli going, but hey? Who knew anymore? Either way, Gabe was trying to keep things as 'normal' as possible, hyper conscious of how any little thing could be misinterpreted now as seduction.

Eli gave him pause however, with his quiet observation, and Gabe halted in his turn toward the office door to arch a confused eyebrow at his brother. Which was it? 'I can't do this with my brother, I can't feel this way'...or 'yeah I don't mind you mauling me sexually in my sleep, or otherwise.' Gabe opened his mouth, but found he completely lacked the words to ask Eli what exactly he was driving at, and closed it again, shaking his head as he turned and headed into the motel office.

He kept his hood up, but tried not to be conspicuous about it as he bought a room till tomorrow night from the bored, disinterested clerk who could barely be bothered to tear his attention away from the little tv blaring bad late night programming from beside the cash register, much less care enough to give Eli's driver’s license a second glance and compare it with the kid standing in front of him. Gabe lent on the counter as the guy ran Eli's card, mulling over that little exchange outside a second ago.

Maybe Eli was just trying to make him feel better? Like, teasing him or something to relieve the tension. Yeah probably. No one freaked right the fuck out about something like having (to Gabe's mind, one-sided) awkward sexual tension with their sibling only to turn around a second later and flirt with them right? Right. Eli was just trying to deal with this in the best way he knew how, Gabe decided. And for some reason that meant weird flirting. Like how you did when someone had a crush on you and you felt flattered, but disinterested in actually pursing anything, so you just kinda half strung them along a little bit to save their feelings and keep feeding the little ego rush of your own at the attention. Yeah, that made sense.

Satisfied with his own theory, Gabe grabbed the key the clerk slid across the counter to him, stuffed Eli's card back in his wallet and headed outside to collect his brother, offering him a much calmer, more collected half slice of a smile as he nodded toward the bank of rooms that stretched along the side of the building.

"Come on, we're in 17." He handed Eli back his wallet as he passed him, and meandered down the line of rooms, flipping the keychain absently around one finger before stopping in front of door 17 and fitting the key to the lock, turning the knob to open the door and stepping back to let Eli in first.

 

Eli didn't know what he'd thought would happen, or how he thought things between them would change, but he realized as his brother walked away that he had thought something would change - had thought some kind of dialogue would begin between them, some new awareness. He knew he hadn't said much, hadn't delivered some kind of moving speech, but he'd said things; he'd admitted to things, had begun to push some kind of truth into the space between them, and Gabe had so far....  either not noticed or something else, something far less promising. The look on his face when he walked away spoke volumes - he had this curiously frozen expression on his face, as though he'd put up a smile like one would put up a banner, and was holding it there by pure force of will. Maybe Eli was paranoid, but he couldn't help but sag against the wall as Gabriel walked away, his gaze troubled as he watched the sleet turn slowly into snow.

When had they stopped understanding each other? They used to finish each other's sentences. They hadn't had a serious fight for most of their lives. But the last three days had been like they were completely different people, and to Eli it felt like they were slipping apart, like they were irrevocably damaged in some way and would simply fade away from each other, and he wondered vaguely if this was what it felt like to break up with someone, and sighed at the thought.

Eli’s phone rang, and he fished it out of his pocket and grimaced. His mom calling. He was surprised it had taken her this long - time was she'd have been blowing up his phone as soon as he hung up almost an hour ago, and he realised with a pang that in some way she was giving up on him too - maybe because he was almost 18, or she expected it of him now, because he wasn't the son she'd raised him to be.

"Mom?" He half-whispered into the phone, and he heard the frustrated huff of his mother letting out a breath on the other end of the phone. He listened to her lecture him, staring blankly at the snow again, mentally filing away her words for later perusal. He sighed quietly, and she cut off mid sentence, and he wondered whether she was irritated that he'd interrupted or had realised he wasn't responding because she was still talking.

 "No, Mom, I'm fine. I'm going to crash here. I'm sorry for the phone call earlier." He paused, long enough for her to respond. "Yes, I was drunk. I'm sorry... I know. Yeah, I know I'm grounded. I'll be back in the morning. I'm already hungover. God is swift."  She sighed again, and seemed like she was going to launch into another rant, so he cut her off. "I'm sorry, Mom. Can we talk about it tomorrow? I'll walk home early.  I'm sorry.  Goodnight.  Love you too.  Bye."

He ended the call, and let his phone hang in his hand for a moment before he slipped it back in his pocket and looked up as Gabe wandered back toward him, key in hand. He considered attempting to smile, but by the time Gabe had seen him and was turning around again to lead him to their room, his facial muscles hadn't moved whether he'd wanted them to or not, and he followed numbly instead, watching his feet as Gabe lead the way.

Eli paused in the door to the room, noting with a mix of resignation and satisfaction that there was only one queen bed, and then preceded Gabe to step in and shuck his damp jacket. His eye was really beginning to throb now that they weren't outside where it was freezing, and his lip didn't feel much better. Slowly he toed off his shoes and then sat on the bed, and tried to look at Gabriel but failed, his eyes instead dropping to the huddled shape of his jacket on the floor. He swallowed. Silence between two people in a room was worse than silence between a hundred people outside.

 

Gabe would have been blind to miss the change in Eli's demeanor in just the short time that he'd been in the office.  Maybe it was the booze catching up to him, but Gabe had the distinct feeling otherwise.  He flicked on the lights to the room as Eli stepped inside and sank onto the bed, leaving the door open as he walked past him, toward the bathroom to grab the ubiquitous little plastic bucket upon the counter just inside.  He headed back out, reaching to ruffle Eli's hair in a habitual, familiar gesture as he passed, headed back outside to the ice machine they had passed enroute, just a few doors down.  He scooped the thing half-full before returning and shutting the door behind him at last, clicking the deadbolt shut and drawing the blinds before  he set the bucket down to shuck his own jacket and hoodie.

He was still in Eli's borrowed clothes, the t-shirt a bit too tight and the jeans a bit too long.  It wasn't a bad look by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a bit amusing.  He kept a cautious eye on Eli as he tossed his stuff on a chair by the door, in that curious-wary way one might watch a wild animal that crept close.  ...Or a ticking time bomb they were hoping to diffuse.

"You're quiet.  Was that Laura on the phone?"  He'd caught Eli shoving it back into his pocket, "She give you an earful?  Don't worry man, she'll get over it.  They always blew everything out of proportion, especially when it comes to you.  But you're the golden child, right?  You're going to Columbia.  You're gonna be an amazing, rich architect and ensure they can retire in comfort to the most exclusive uber-religious retirement home in the country."

He was talking to fill the silence, but the sound of his voice was a good one; even toned, gentle, almost lulling.  As he spoke he ducked back into the bathroom and ran the water, wet two hand towels, and came back out to kneel down in front of where Eli sat upon the bed, smiling up at him cautiously.

"Everyone loves you, man.  You're way too hard on yourself."  Eyes shifted away for a moment in reconsideration before snapping back as his smile broadened.  "Well, everyone 'scept those guys whose bong you smashed.  Guess you don't get the distinction of leaving highschool with a clean fight record after all, hmm?  Near perfect attendance, sure.  But with a black eye on your permanent record.  Better hope prospective employers don't get wind of this.  You'll be stuck designing dog houses for rich assholes the rest of your life."

Look, he was trying, all he wanted was to see Eli smile, it was all he wanted when he made the decision to cross the street and come flying down that stupid slide the other night.  Now everything he'd done seemed to be to the contrary.  No huge surprise.  Everything he touched turned to shit.

Fingers reached up to tilt Eli's chin slightly, fingertips dragging lightly under it before he began gently, gently cleaning blood and tear tracks and dirt and whatever else away with one of the wet towels.  The hand under his brother's chin turned, and cool fingers circled his throat lightly, thumb resting against the hollow of his collarbone. 

It was a mistake.  He could feel the steady push a pulse there and the dull constant hunger in him yawned, showing teeth and raking sharp nails down the inside of his stomach.  Gabe pulled his lower lip in unconsciously, sucking at it.  Pale eyes flicked up over his brother's face, seeing him in puzzle pieces.  Dark lashes, darker bruises, pale cheekbones under red and brown smudges, the shape of his mouth, set of his chin.  They finally found the soft brown of eyes and stayed there, Gabe's hand stilling.

"Hey."  Like he was finally seeing him, finally saying a proper hello again.  Painful but so, so good. 

 

Eli watched him in silence as he moved about the room, barely hearing his words but enjoying the rise and fall of his voice just the same. That was Gabe, really; constantly taking care of him when he was too much of a fucking child to function as a human being. Slowly, he took a deep breath, and was considering going and showering, and maybe regaining the feeling in his extremities, when his brother crouched down in front of him, and the urge to go anywhere faded to nothing. He winced at the first touch of cold water on his bruised face, and he couldn't help but fiddle with the edges of his sleeves as Gabe worked, wondering idly how bad his face was. It didn't feel like he was too swollen, so hopefully he wasn't totally deformed. It'd be just beautiful if his face turned into a beachball on this of all nights.

"Hey," he said tiredly in response, and was halfway through biting nervously on his lip when he discovered why that was a poor choice, and winced, sucking on his again bleeding lip instead. He thought of any number of things to say, thin and pale jokes that he couldn't help but want to shove between them like a wall, but he couldn't bring himself to say them. Things like 'So how bad is my face right now?' and 'You are very momish for a bloodthirsty demon,' neither of which were particularly conducive to him actually dealing with anything. They could go back to casual, if awkward, banter; they were old hands at it now. No sexual tension here, definitely not, no sir... unless blood exchange or sleep was involved, apparently. Making jokes now felt like it would be strangely sacrilegious, like it would only seal their fate of slipping apart.

Slowly, he reached up to wrap his fingers around Gabriel's hand holding the wet cloth and drew it away from his face.

"What do you remember from this afternoon?" He finally said softly, and kept eye contact, although it felt a little bit like bleeding from an open wound for every second that he did it. He cleared his throat. "That's probably a.... stupid question to ask, actually. I don't - I don't know."

Eli licked his lips. How to even begin a conversation like this? He glanced away, brow furrowed, which made the skin around his left eye hurt, but he barely noticed. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, at a loss. There was a pause.

 "I wish I wasn't sobering up. Shit, um." He looked at Gabe, again unconsciously chewing his lip and hoping he didn't look as scared shitless as he felt. "I don't - I don't know how to talk about this. It - I - it never occurred to me that how I felt about you was abnormal until we nearly had sex in my bed and I - that was - I did that, I woke up and I - started it."

 

Gabe broke into his first honest smile in a long time at the returned greeting, and kept up his gentle dabbing at Eli's face till the hand around his wrist stilled him. Eli's question that followed wasn't unexpected, after all Gabe had been bugging him about it all night.  Eli's admittance that he had been the instigator however?

 

If vampires could blush, Gabe would have been red as a damn beet, as it was he could still feel his ears and cheeks burning like a phantom pain of a hot flush.  He was well aware of the fact he was blinking way too rapidly, and had to force himself to stop, look down into Eli's lap, realizing belatedly that staring at the exact location of his brother's dick was most likely not the thing to do.  Too late. He glanced back up, and in spite of how flustered he seemed, he actually looked a bit relieved.

Arm of the hand holding the wash cloth aloft came down slowly, rested its elbow over Eli's thigh.

"Oh.  Oh?  I didn't... I mean I didn't know that.  It's uhm, less remembering because it just felt like I was dreaming."  One corner of his mouth hooked upward in that unconsciously charming way that made him look so much more deviously sly then he actually was.  "I just remember feeling you, wanting, uhm...wanting you.  So badly."  Air left him in a little rush of breath on the 'so'.  How long had he been holding that want in?  It felt like dropping a ton of bricks to release the burden of that admission, and shoulders eased under it, frame relaxing.

"I wanted to pin you down... I remember pulling at your clothes, at your, ah, cock."  That stinging of cheeks increased two fold, "Things felt like they were either slow motion or fast forward.  I remember wanting to taste you, bite you, hold you down.  You kept moving and I felt like I was going to come all over your back, uh... yeeah, that's about it.  I thought I remembered fucking you but everything kinda became a blur after a while.  I honestly don't think I would have recalled any of it if I hadn't woken up with your bloody shirt in my hand."

Dark head canted to one side as he watched Eli chew on his lip, watched it with a serious intensity, eyes losing their focus slightly, voice wandering off.  God, he was hungry...

"I'm...uhm, sorry if I hurt you- "  He was pushing upward, dropping the washcloth as hands spread themselves over Eli's thighs, rising in his kneel to lean up swiftly, mouth open, going for that bloody mess of his brother's lower lip.  He managed to halt just shy of it, breath shivering between them, feeling like a tight, iron band was crushing his ribcage.  _Just a taste, just... oh, fuck it_.  "Eli?"

It was a plea, it was a question, it was a permission slip held between trembling fingers, waiting for a signature.  Gabe's chin tilted forward, lower lip catching just under his brother's, just enough friction there to pull it forward a fraction, close it  between his own.  The soft noise Gabriel made would have been more at home in an adult film than anywhere else.  He couldn't manage the self-control to suck even gently upon that lip just yet, and instead the smooth, slick tip of his tongue licked against it, taste exploding like fireworks against the back of his brain, radiating dying light in reflection against the inside of his closed eyelids.

 

Eli had begun to feel a bit lightheaded once Gabe started to speak, and the blood that had briefly flooded his face instead decided to flood to a different area entirely. Gabriel should narrate porn or something, he thought savagely, and had the presence of mind to feel annoyed that his brother was whispering about pinning him down and fucking him while they were sitting facing each other and he could see the way his words were effecting Eli. These sorts of conversations should take place in a bed, he thought, whispered in the dark, or pressed close so he could blush, and thinking that made him think of them entwined in a bed whispering to each other all the desperate, dark things they'd been secretly thinking of each other, and he swallowed thickly.

He was going to reach up and cover Gabe's mouth in a minute if he kept talking, and drag him to bed so they could do exactly the thing he wanted to do (but probably shouldn't) - but then Gabe was up close to his face, and his eyes widened for a moment. He had a moment to see the look of pure need on his face and to wonder whether that look had been on his face when they'd been in bed together, and then they were almost kissing, almost, his lip caught between Gabriel's. He inhaled sharply, and his brother made a desperate noise against his lips and he shivered, and answered with one of his own.

The hand wrapped around his brother's wrist tightened and pulled him a little closer, and then Elijah was letting go and reaching up with both hands to shove his fingers through the hair at the base of Gabe's neck and drag him closer to kiss him properly; he tilted his head and licked into his mouth, leaning backwards and pulling the other with him, trying to draw him closer so they were pressed together, his eyes falling closed.

 

Gabe had all but frozen until that little noise Eli made in return lit the fuse that set him in action, couples with the tug to his wrist.  He was leaning forward, straining upward on his knees,  sucking hard at the bloody lip between his own, the taste of it maddening; sweet copper sunshine in his mouth.  And all he wanted was more, more.  Mouth opened and suddenly Eli's tongue was there, slick and quick against his own, something to chase.  Chase it he did, pitching forward as Eli tugged at him, mouth eager, cool against hot, bleeding away the salt of tears and thick, sour taste of alcohol with each brief invasion, each open invitation to do the same. 

Hands spread over Eli's thighs pushed down before dragging upward and inward, tugging open the topmost button of his brother's jeans before he circled arms round his torso and followed Eli's fall back onto the bed, scrambling to rise over him, hips pressed between his brother's spread thighs.  He couldn't help it, the way he curled, pushed, not thrusting, no, just grinding pressure between them in a way that shot exquisite agony right up his spine with a crackling like a lightning bolt. 

Eli's hand's, his fingers in his hair, tugging, dragging against his scalp were things that were going to drive him mad, he knew it.  Skin burned where he touched, stinging sweetly, leaving an ache that begged that it be done again, again. He was doing everything possible not to maul Eli's mouth, and pressed together from chest to groin as they were, Eli could surely feel the slow, wringing shudders that took turns wracking through his brother each time he returned to pull gently as he could on that bleeding lower lip, earning himself just a few more drops, just another taste.  Each time setting off a fresh wave of those popping fireworks that exploded in dull, muffled crackles at the back of the brain, the trailing sparks bubbling outward along the nervous system, running deep through limbs to find outlets in fingertips and toes.

 

Eli hadn't realized he was nervous, was vulnerably unsure how he'd be received until Gabriel reacted and he was desperately, pathetically relieved that his brother hadn't pushed him away. He hadn't known how much he had needed this - how much he had needed to be honest with Gabriel, had needed to have this great barricade between them fall. How much it had been hurting him to keep it a secret.

Suddenly they were pressed together, and he realized he was hard by virtue of having Gabe's cock pressed against his, and he moaned softly against his lips and rocked forward. It was like they'd always been headed here, in a way; he knew Gabe's body almost better than he knew his own, and here they were in a motel of all places. Maybe God had meant this. He'd brought Gabriel to him in the first place, after all.

Eli couldn't concern himself for too long with thoughts on God, though, because his knees had slid up and he hooked an ankle around one of Gabe's, and their hips were locked together and rocking slowly to send flames fanning up and down his spine. He groaned, and accidentally bit down on Gabriel's lip - and his fingers twitched in his hair, and he bit down harder and pulled him closer, and he could taste the thin line of blood from his split lip weaving between them.

He felt a little like there was an itch under his skin, like there was a fire slowly growing in all his limbs and he was going to lose his mind if he didn't do something about it, like he was going to burn up like kindling or break apart or explode; nearly frantically, he slipped his hands down and under Gabe's tee shirt, grabbing two handfuls of it and pulling it up as if his life depended on touching more of his brother's skin. Fingernails dug into pale skin, and he abruptly wished they were both naked, and the thought made him pull away slowly.

He looked up at Gabe for a moment, eyes dark and lips swollen, and slowly licked at a little blood that had gathered at the corner of his mouth.

"I should shower," He said slowly, his voice rough, and swallowed. His eyes flicked between Gabriel's eyes and his lips. "But I'm still pretty drunk. I could slip and fall if I go alone."

 

It was like being back in that church again, but better, so much better having Eli coherent when he hooked his leg around him.  There was something about Elijah.  The way there was this constant current of need running just under his skin, breaking the surface tension every so often.  A monster swimming dark waters under the polished, refined attempts at perfect middle class white boy.  Gabe loved it, wanted to plunge both hands into that inky water and let the scales of that creature slip through his fingers.

His shirt was bunching up around the wings of his shoulder blades and Eli's short, blunt nails were digging into his flesh, had him breaking the contact of their mouths as his head arched back, breath hissing through teeth in a way that was both protest and encouragement.  Eyes opened to glance down at his brother in amused surprise, but Eli was already looking back, the temptation of his mouth open as he drug the tip of his tongue against one bloody corner of lips.  Gabe's world was in a tailspin, fascination hooked upon the way half-congealed red drops dispersed against the wet tip of Eli's tongue, the way mouth shaped, moved against words. 

It took him a moment to process those words, put them together and translate them into sense.

  1. _Not alone.  Oh._



"Y-yeah ok.  Ok."  Gabe was planting hands in the mattress, pushing himself upright, squirming out of his borrowed shirt before reaching to offer Eli a hand up.  That strange phantom sense of sensation reared its head again.  He could have sworn he could feel his heart thudding in his throat, lodged up just under his adam's apple, more nervous adrenaline pumping then the first time he and Mandy had... he didn't even want to think about it. 

 

Eli stayed where he was for a long moment, one leg bent and resting on the edge of the mattress. He wasn't totally sure if his brain had stopped working altogether at the sight of Gabriel pulling off his tee shirt, or if all his blood was just resolutely elsewhere, but either way his thoughts moved slower than usual and he slowly raised himself onto his elbows, his shirt bunched at his navel and his jeans hanging open, and contemplated just pulling Gabe back down onto the bed and foregoing the shower.

Gabriel was watching him intensely, and he licked his lips again and finally pushed himself up, gaze skirting the length of his brother's torso for a moment, torn between running away and dragging him closer. He couldn't help the pale blush that lit up his features, his eyes half-lidded as he reached out to trail his fingers along the line of Gabriel's hipbone, feverish mind wondering what the skin there would taste like. He swallowed, and swayed forward unconsciously as if he couldn't help himself, hands sliding up his chest to gather at his nape and  tug him in for a chaste kiss. They parted slowly, and Eli pressed their foreheads briefly together before he turned to pad to the small bathroom, arms raising to pull his shirt off over his head as he went. He tossed it absently back toward the bed, and then glanced over his shoulder toward Gabe as his hands dropped to his zipper.

"C'mere," He called out, and shucked his jeans with one hand as he bent to turn on the showerhead - and then almost immediately turned where he stood and grabbed Gabe as he wandered in behind him, pulling him in for a kiss as if he hadn't seen him for years and not a few seconds, all urgency and roving hands, his grasp immediately going for his jeans and tugging them hurriedly open. After a moment he grew impatient, pulling him closer and revelling in the press of skin on skin, his mouth slanted across Gabe's so that he could nip again at his lips, smiling into the kiss.

 

Gabe without his shirt was a palely beautiful thing; leanly muscular skin flawless. If he'd had scars, and surely he had once, far too rough a tumble a creature not to have accumulated his fair share, then whatever had happened to him to change him into what he was now had managed to wipe them away, leaving him looking like a flawless fresh slate with all evidence of life before buffed clean. Skin was smooth save for a thin, dark trail of hair trailing down from his navel into jeans, and under the brush of Eli's fingers felt like the cool touch of living marble. It was uncanny, yes, but wonderful.

The grey sheen of eyes watched Eli touch him, absorbed in his brother's expression as he sat up, lent forward, and came rising, hands hot like fever as they skimmed up his chest. It all felt so unreal, so completely fantastic that Gabe wasn't entirely sure he wasn't dreaming again, and on the off chance he was he was savoring each detail, trying to lock it all away in memory, keep it secret and safe.

He wanted to melt with the chaste little press of a kiss Eli offered him. Gabe's chin tilting up to catch it from the slightly taller boy. (How irritating he'd always secretly found that after they'd both gone through their growth spurts, but now it was a bit thrilling, to have to reach a bit for the mouth he wanted, instead of how it had always been the other way around with girls.) The intimacy of foreheads pressed together twisted something pleasantly in the pit of his stomach, and left a wonderful little ache of affection clinging to the dark, still stone of his heart as he trailed after his brother toward the bathroom, toeing off shoes and socks as Eli shed his own shirt and jeans.

He trailed fingertips softly along the long line of Eli's back when he bent to turn the water on, and was already reaching for his brother by the time he turned around, wanting him close again, hips rocking with each pull as Eli tugged his jeans open. Hands went wandering on their own, fingers burrowing under the waistband of boxers and shoving deeper, plunging in up to the wrists so palms could get a grip of either round of Eli's backside, clenching in a playful squeeze before becoming more possessive in their grasp, using the hold to jerk his brother forward just a bit, pull him flush against himself as he ducked his head and bit bloodlessly at the taller boy's shoulder.

 

Eli gasped quietly, his hips bucking helplessly at the unfamiliar and exciting touch of skin on skin. Steam had begun to fill the room, the shower water beginning to beat rhythmically against the glass door and heating the room quickly; moisture had begun to bead on his skin, gathering in the dips of his shoulder blades and in Gabe's collarbones, and he inhaled sharply the warm, damp air at the harmless bite on his shoulder. His hands shook where he slipped them beneath the waistband of Gabriel's jeans, and he shoved them down and off, and jumped when his hands met nothing underneath.

"Uh," He breathed uselessly, gazing slightly wildly over Gabe's shoulder at the tiles, and couldn't suppress the shiver that wracked his frame. Slowly, he swallowed, and then turned his head slightly to rest his blushing cheek against the other's, fingers lightly skimming over the small of Gabriel's back.

"You are meant to be stopping me from falling over," He said softly, and leaned back so he could kiss Gabriel, slowly and deliberately, his eyes half-lidded and cheeks lit up in a nervous blush. He felt vaguely like he was about to pass out, and running away and hiding was beginning to seem like a viable option, so before he could overthink it and do just that, he pushed his boxers down and stepped out of them, his eyes sliding away shyly as he did. If one of them was going to decide this was a bad idea and shove the other away permanently, this was the time to do it.

There was a pause, and then Eli looked up with a deep breath, and slipped past the open door to step under the spray of the shower, careful to keep his back to Gabe. Absently, he reached up to run a hand through his hair as he did, hissing as the hot water slipped down and over his cock. Almost without thought, he slid a hand down his chest and palmed himself, letting out a gratified breath as he did, his head lolling back.

 

Gabe, for his part, seemed far less bothered by their nudity then his brother.  Not to say he wasn't quietly dying a thousand little wonderful deaths inside as Eli shoved his pants off and then pushed his own boxers to the floor, oh no.  He just wasn't quite so outwardly discomforted by it.  Though he was loving Eli's modesty, grinning broadly at it without remorse.  Eli's soft touch had eyes slanting shut, however, reveling in the light feathering of fingertip against his skin and the heat of a cheek against his own.  Gabe turned his head to nuzzle at his brother's throat, kissing, almost nipping - until Eli pulled away.

"Oh, was I knocking you over?  Sorry..."  Came the mumbled response, Gabe's brain completely unable to devote enough of itself to rational thought or snappy speech.  Eli looked so endearingly embarrassed, Gabe was pretty damn sure that look was going to be the actual death of him, and he followed his mortified brother into the shower like a stumbling puppy dog, half tripping over the ledge of the tub before he got in and shut the glass door behind them both.  In the time it took for him to turn his attention away to slide that door shut, however, Eli had cupped a hand around himself, and Gabe turned back to catch his shoulders slightly hunch and watch a blissful shiver slide up his entire frame.

Every last fibre of his being wanted to shove Eli up against the glass, make him spread his hands slippery against its steamed surface, mash his cheek up to it so that condensation rolled like tears down his face, and fuck him until he couldn't stand for two days.  He could feel himself shaking with the effort control took, and his throat was dry as he swallowed.  He bent, grabbed the little bottle of liquid soap off a ledge and squeezed a bit into one palm before tossing the thing aside.  A quick friction between hands before he sidled carefully closer to Eli's turned back, hands spreading  under the wings of shoulder blades and sliding downward, slowly, following the gradual slope toward the small of his back and up again around the rise of bare buttocks.  Eli really had no business having such a perfect backside, was the refrain going round and round Gabe's head.

Hands spanned each round, slippery-slick with soap suds, and thumbs nestled right at the start of the crevasse between them as Gabe lent forward, enough to bite at the nape of Eli's neck, teeth skimming harmlessly against wet skin, save for a brief pinch here or there, tongue soft as he licked a drop of water off the curve of Eli's ear.  Thumbs slid down, parting, and then fingertips took their place, creating a dull pressure just behind the tender skin of Eli's scrotum, stroking backward and then round, in slow circles, just pushing against the taut pucker of his hole.  Amazing, really, how wonderful a thing slight pressure could be.

"Would you come for me, Eli?"  Gabe's voice was so, so quiet against his brother's ear.  A low purr, all the agonizing nerves of it well hidden by how soft words were spoken. Back and forth, back and forth a soap-slick finger rocked before there was a wiggle, a push... and an agonizingly slow sliiiiide within. "I've always wanted to see you get off.  Wanted to hear you.  Please?"

 

Eli had been so distracted, nerves lighting up at the warm wet of the shower and his hand on his cock that he'd almost calmed, almost let himself fall and drift into the languid pleasure of their position. He'd heard Gabe's footfalls as he'd slipped into the shower behind him, felt the minute change in temperature, and had leaned back at the touch along his back, breathing out slowly and smiling a little. Lazily, he shivered, and moaned a little, a pleasant warmth curling in his belly as Gabriel's touches became a little more daring, as they made his blood spark and his dick grow harder below his palm.

"What are you doing..." He muttered, voice barely making it out of his throat and rough with a languid desire, and turned his head slightly to gaze at his brother, his eyes half-lidded and dark. He smiled slightly, and then licked drops of water off his lips, his brows drawing together and hips jerking as Gabriel's touch became suddenly intimate; he let out a breath, and a flush travelled slowly up his neck.

"Mmm... Gabe -" He huffed, and had let his head loll forward to press his forehead to the cool tiles when Gabriel's finger was suddenly inside him, and he jerked, and hissed a breath through his teeth, and abandoned the lazy grip on his cock to grab at the wall instead. His eyes slid closed, lips parting so he could breathe hotly against the tiles, his adam's apple jumping in his throat as he tried to swallow. Perhaps if he had been more in control of himself, if his thoughts hadn't been wiped from his head the moment Gabe began to touch him, he might have protested or pushed away the foreign touch inside of him, but instead it never occurred to him; he pushed back, his spine curling, wanting to spread his legs to ease the discomfort, but he couldn't in the narrow space, and so he raised his hips instead. Desperately he swallowed, near-gasping for breath, the shiny tile before his face fogging with condensation as his fingers dig into the gaps between tiles for purchase. He wished fervently that he had something to grab, bedsheets or a table edge or something, and the wish is so intimate and so filthy that he shudders and clenches around Gabe's finger, then groans at the feeling.

 

Gabe startled a bit with Eli's reaction, concerned for a second that Eli's knees were actually going to buckle and he was going down.  He had to grin, however where Eli just clutched at the damp tiles and raised hips instead.  He reached forward, splaying one hand atop Eli's, fingers slotting themselves between fingers to keep that hand pinned.  He was not about to answer that question of his brother's, at least not directly.  The blade of his nose nudged just behind Eli's ear, head turning to suck a slow trail of kisses down along the column of his throat, stinging, hard things that left skin blossoming in the start of red bruises.

"Touch yourself."  He buried the words against wet skin, and the finger inside Eli pushed a little deeper, curled in a slight stroke and started to slide out, only to be joined by a second finger, both pushing up far as they would go; invasive, odd sensation filling, teasing. 

 

Eli’s head was starting to spin, and he didn't know whether it would end in him collapsing in a twitching heap or exploding and tearing himself apart. Everything was suddenly too hot - he was sweating under the warm spray, and the air that he sucked into his lungs and pushed back out was steamy hot, and the slick digit - digits now, fuck fuck - were burning hot, and he was sure he was delirious with fever or about to burst into flames.

"Gabe - Gabe - unnnh," he gasped against the tile, and then bit his lip as he hurried to do what his brother told him - his palm skimmed down his chest, now cool from the tiles, to wrap again around his cock and drag down in a slow stroke. Moaning softly, strangled by the too-hot too-sharp sting of his teeth in his lower lip, he tightened his fist, cock jumping in his hand and hole clutching, and he whimpered. It was still too much - but too much more, like the frantic beat of his heart was pumping fire or electricity through his veins instead of blood - and it all rushed to his core, coiling sharp like a spring, building in pressure with every quickening stroke of his fist around his cock and every push-pull-drag of the fingers buried in him. 

 

It was all so surreal.  Eli shuddering against him, naked in the shower, pumping at his own cock and moaning his name.  Even on his worst nights alone in his bed, jerking off like the desperate, oversexed teenager he was, Gabe wouldn't have been able to fathom such a scenario.  It would have driven him mad, hell, it was driving him mad.  This was all kinds of levels of wrong and he couldn't find a single fuck to give about any of them.  Nevertheless, he was fighting that distinct and awful sensation of a man who'd just got everything he ever wanted in life, all at once, and felt sure that any second now some impending disaster beyond hi own imagining was looming, just waiting to crush the elation and rip it all away again.

He shoved at that horrible, insidious blackness, trying to force it away.  Nothing could take Elijah from him, nothing could steal this moment, he'd keep the way Eli said his name like that for all time, take it to the grave with him if ever he actually did end up there. 

His mouth on Eli's neck gentled before he lifted his head, shifted closer, nudged at his brother's cheek with the wet tip of his nose, silently begging he turn his head for a kiss, wanting to taste those shuddering moans, drink them down.  No doubt in his mind they'd be as satisfying as the taste of what ran through Eli's veins. 

"Do you think of me, Eli?  When you get off...when you're alone?  Do you want me to fuck you?"  Each question that poured out of his mouth was worse than the next, but he couldn't help it.  Like a child worrying at the dull pain of a loose tooth till it bled, he couldn't leave the feeling of how incredibly wrong this was alone.  But unlike his brother, who Gabe was sure felt all hellfire and damnation and terror from it, all Gabe felt was an intense thrill - a heady rush.  Just the same as the first time he'd ever done something wrong on purpose, but magnified about ten thousand fold.

Still, if this was so wrong, why did it feel all kinds of right?  Like it was the most right he'd been in his entire life?

Gabe rocked against Eli, his hand slipping from pinning Eli's hand to the tile so that he could wrap his arm around him, pressing his palm to the hard thud of Eli's heart just under his ribcage.  Steadily trying to ignore the way his own cock was aching, hanging hard and heavy before his thighs, brushing against the curve of Eli's ass as he pushed closer, fucking fingers deeper into the heat of him, curling fingertips to stroke at the inside of him each time he drew out, and straightening to reach as deep as possible with each push inward.

"Would you do this?"  He could barely speak, lust clotted in his voice like cold honey.  "Fuck yourself and think of me?  I can't tell you how many times my pillow got to hear your name groaned into it."

 

Eli couldn't think any more, couldn't even begin to, could only begin to imagine that the slick weight inside of him was Gabriel's cock and not his fingers, could only too easily imagine that his brother was stretching him for something larger and soon he'd be shuddering around something else entirely. And this much, the slow burning torture was already more than enough to send him insane; he could feel Gabe everywhere, wrapped around him and inside him and begging for a kiss, and he wanted more but could already feel the slow curling heat begin to flare, his cock leaking over his fist.

Twisting where he stood, he pressed his forehead to Gabriel's, mouth half-way seeking a kiss but too far gone, too frantic with the pleasure racing through his veins to do much more than press their lips together and then breathe hotly into his brother's mouth. And then Gabriel was asking him questions, whispering dirty-wrong-perfect things in his ear, and his eyelids fluttered closed, and he thought of his brother fucking him, he thought of telling Gabriel he would, he was going to have to fuck himself into a coma every night for the rest of his life if he couldn't get this out of his head, he would shove his fingers inside himself and imagine it was his brother's cock which he couldn't have, he would he would he would - and he was coming, arching his back and fucking himself on Gabe's fingers, his cock painting the tiled wall as he gasped his brother's name and shuddered, stars exploding behind his eyelids.

 

Eli's reaction was priceless, perfect.  Gabe was halfway toward cumming himself as Eli arched back against him crushing the heavy throb of his own cock between the curve of Eli's ass and his own stomach.  Eli's breath in his mouth, the strangled sound of his voice, the way he shuddered as he came, pushing back against the fingers buried inside of him - all of it was more than Gabe could barely stand.  He was biting at his brother's cheek in grazing, sharp nips, greedy each time his mouth came in range, stealing breath and tasting moans till Eli relaxed against him.  Gabe's hand on his chest slid upward, enough to cradle Elijah's throat tenderly, keep his face turned toward him.  Kisses slowed to a gentle catch and release, tender little suckles of lower and upper lip in turn.

Gabe slid fingers out slowly, carefully, let them smooth across the pucker of skin that was sure to be sore tomorrow, before they slid forward to cup the soft weight of ballocks, roll them gently against fingers in the barest constriction of a fist before touch ceased entirely.

He held Eli, letting breath catch up to him, waiting for the shivering to stop, and eventually bent to grab the discarded soap, pour another generous dollop of it out and suds hand thoroughly before rinsing them both.  The shower stream was starting to turn lukewarm, and it would be a matter of short minutes before it became cold altogether.  So much for showering to get clean.  Regardless of his own personal lack of body temperature, Gabe had no desire whatsoever to stand under a cold stream with a still raging hard on, much less having Eli catch pnumonia or something on top of getting his face beat black and blue.  Hands bracketed his brother's shoulders, turning him toward the sliding glass door before he lent to pull it open.

"Come on?  It's getting late...er...early.  You could use some ice on that eye if there's any left."

It was a struggle not to think about the fact the tension between his own legs was damn near unbearable, but he tried, and tried not to wonder what a case of blue balls was like for a vampire - but supposed he was going to find out.  He waited to Eli to clear the shower before stepping out after him, shutting the taps and grabbing a towel to wrap it round his waist in some misguided attempt at modesty.

 

Eli sagged as all the tension leaked out of him, his every muscle relaxing and damn near sending him into a heap on the floor of the tub. Everything seemed to be a sort of haze - moreso than when he'd been drunk, but also entirely different. It was vaguely like he was floating through clouds, except that his ass was sore and he was wet and cold... but even then, it was almost entirely pleasurable, and he felt like he could fall asleep any minute now. Sluggishly, he stumbled out of the shower and wrapped one of the white motel towels around his middle and grabbed another, his eyes half closed. It took him until they padded into the bedroom and he was half way through collapsing on the bed, face first, for him to realise that Gabe was being a giant idiot martyr, and he really wanted to see what his brother looked like when he came.

Slowly, he rolled over and turned a lazy smile on his brother, absently rubbing the extra towel over his wet hair and feeling like he probably looked like a very pleased, very large cat, the way he was rolling around on the sheets.

"Hey," He said softly, and realised with some dawning embarrassment that it was probably the most coherent thing he'd said for hours, thanks to half a dozen beers and the way Gabe had just shoved him against the shower wall and made him come so hard he'd seen stars. He breathed in slowly, shifting a little where he lay, unable to find it in himself to be surprised that a wet, half naked and obviously hard Gabriel was making his own cock start to take interest again so quickly. Being seventeen had its advantages. He licked his lips.

"I uh... have an idea," He said slowly, and sat up  to push himself further up the mattress so he could lay back against the pillows. Turned out you could still be shy with someone after they'd fingered you into oblivion, he thought. Noted. "Are you... hungry... at all?"

 

Sleepy, sex-satisfied Eli was a sight to behold, and Gabriel was not above taking a moment to enjoy it as Eli rolled about on the bed, still half-soaked and half-hard, bruised mouth grinning in a way that almost made the darkening purple-black bruise still blossoming under his one eye disappear.  Almost.  Gabe pulled his own towel off, turning his back for a second (for whose benefit he had no idea, but the motion seemed to occur more out of instinct then actual modesty) drying himself off  before he wrapped the uncomfortably damp towel back around his hips and glanced over one shoulder at Eli's words.

_Hungry?  Oh yes._

He turned back around and lent forward, planting hands upon the give of the mattress to climb up the length of it, dark brows lifting as he nodded silent assent, features comically serious. So hungry.  He tossed himself alongside his brother, getting comfortable as he wedged himself against the pillows, one hand cushioning itself under his head, the other reaching to smooth knuckles against the line of Eli's jaw.

"Yeah, really hungry... but you've lost enough blood for one night..." Pale eyes rolled upward, mentally calculating, "...and the past three days.  I mean, I can only take so much, so often, right?  I'm not that good at this and I'm kinda scared to hurt you." 

Eyes fell again, staring at the scant space of rumpled sheets between them as his hand spread across the plane of Eli's chest, one thumb absently toying over the flat of a nipple as he worried at his own lower lip with sharp teeth.

"I'll just uh...I'll find someone tomorrow night maybe?  Walk out of town or something, maybe play hitchhiker, I dunno..."

 

Eli took a moment to half roll onto his side (with some difficulty because ugh, movement) so he could face his brother, his hands coming up between them to wrap his long fingers gently around Gabriel's wrist and forearm, his legs curled in too-late modesty. Slowly, he opened his mouth to respond, but then closed it again, at a loss. He'd meant to offer Gabe his blood. Hesitantly, his gaze travelled from the sharp points digging into his brother's lower lip to where he was still hard between them, and his cheeks flamed, gaze skittering away almost immediately, and wanted to kick himself for it.

"Well, you don't - uh, have to," He said cautiously, and found his eyes again lingering on Gabriel's mouth, and shifted closer, his fingers creeping gingerly up his arm. Idly, he wondered whether anyone else in the history of the world had ever been this completely ridiculous and shy directly after sex. Probably just him. Figured.

Silently he took a deep breath and then, steeling himself, he wriggled under the arm thrown between them until they were nose to nose, and then he took his time manipulating Gabriel's arm as if he was a mannequin so that it was wrapped around his waist. He smiled sweetly, feeling a little smug at his own daring.

"But I thought it... um. I wasn't sure if it felt... good for you?" He bit his lip, eyes huge and unsure in the lack of light.  He continued quickly, folding his arms up between them, the backs of his fingers just lightly brushing Gabriel's throat. "And I barely lost any blood yesterday. I could take iron pills or something, too. If you're - hungry."

 

Bemusedly, Gabe watched Eli shuffle and shimmy on the bed, wriggling awkward-limbed in the most damnably endearing ways Gabe had probably ever seen as he struggled to cuddle close.  He'd been with a few girls in highschool, and at least one of them he'd been sure was a first-timer, but even their post-coital attempts at sweetness seemed like over-saccharine, childish attempts at coy and cute by comparison to Eli's genuine fumblings at affection.

Gabe curled his arm helpfully around Elijah's middle, pulling the lower half of him closer, enough so he could tangle legs loosely with Eli's.  Restless fingers toyed at the lower curve of his brother's back, stroking tenderly toward the very start of the line between cheeks and back up again, over and over in a soothing little metronome.

"Mmm yeah it does.  Almost better than anything.  But I took a lot two days ago..." He vacillated, though eyes drifting shut and his chin lifted slightly at the sensation of the backs of Eli's fingers against his throat, the comfortable position dredging up memories of last night. Regardless, he pulled his hand from under his own head to take hold of one of Eli's wrists and pull it upward, nosing at the soft skin just inside the hollow of a thumb, sucking a kiss from it slowly. 

There was a pulse point at the base of the thumb, vein strong and thick enough to thrum against the surface of the skin almost visibly.  Teeth set lightly in skin just on either side of it as Gabe's tongue drug over the rise of it, the grey of eyes slanting open to watch Eli curiously. 

 

Eli swallowed, hesitant as he watched Gabe apparently make out with his hand, which shouldn't have been as sexual as it was. It definitely shouldn't have felt like he was sucking on anything else... but apparently his body wasn't aware of that, because he could still feel himself growing hard again, and his brow furrowed in embarrassment. To think he'd cheerfully assumed that he was going to completely avoid being a horny teenage boy; apparently all he'd needed was inspiration. Hell.

Slowly, Eli leaned closer and twined an arm around his brother's ribs under his shoulder, legs shifting to pull him closer. He breathed in and out slowly, lightly running his nails along the curve of Gabriel's shoulder and back again, half-lidded eyes following their progression.

"Well, it - uh, might make me a bit lightheaded if you take as much as last time," He said slowly, and paused to resist the urge to squirm or shove Gabriel over backwards to grind on him. He chewed his lip, fingers twitching between them. He rolled his hips in one languid motion, eyelids fluttering, and raised his head slightly to press a closed-mouth kiss to the corner of Gabe's lips. "But if you only take a little... just to feel good. If - if you want."

 

"Mmm...I could."  Gabe murmured, teeth lifting pressure to speak.  He could also think of several other things that might feel really damn good, each of these ratcheting up the list of priority as Eli kept moving in, kept touch alive.  "...Maybe..."

Gabe sucked thoughtfully here and there across the warmth of his brother's wrist, pulling it forward inch by inch, laying down a meandering trail of ticklishly pulling, slightly pinching bites of kisses, pausing in the crook of his elbow to nestle a deeper nuzzle of a kiss.  The further his inroads went the more Eli had to lean toward him as his arm was co-opted, till at last Gabe gave him a tug, and rocked backward as Eli came rolling over atop him.

Head settling back against the pillow, he nudged the blade of his nose against Eli's jaw, pushing it upward, enough to lick at the lean rise of his adam's apple.  Hands settled upon hips and pulled without thinking.  He was still hard as a stone, and with Eli right between his thighs, weight a pleasant crush against arousal, even the extra slight pressure of his own pull was enough to send his own head rocking back suddenly, breath catching in a silent stammer.

 

Eli had been watching Gabe with a slightly desperate look at he was slowly tugged forward, blissfully unaware of anything beside the feel of Gabe's mouth moving slowly but surely up the sensitive inside of his arm and the burning hard line of the cock against his leg. So little attention was he paying that when his brother slyly dragged him the last distance, and he found himself suddenly lengthwise along Gabe's body, he gasped in surprise and shifted instinctually until his knees were on either side of Gabriel's hips.

His brother was the picture of arousal beneath him, head thrown back until the long line of his throat was bared and pale in the half-light, and Eli leaned up just enough that he could see him fully - and that shoved their hips together, and he sighed softly, and shivered, goosebumps breaking out across his shoulders. He glanced down, lips twisting as he reached down to wrap his cock in a loose fist and stroke it slowly, once, and then glanced up thoughtfully at Gabe's face as he instead braced himself with a hand on each side of his ribcage and slowly, deliberately, rocked his hips down, his cock grinding against the other's. He moaned softly, eyes closing, and reached up blindly to pull Gabriel into a hard kiss, his fingers twisting in his hair.

 

Eli was....Eli was... oh god...  Gabe was having a hard time managing.  This wasn't quite what he'd meant to happen when he'd pulled the other boy near, and for a minute he was swimming warm waters between what ought to be and what was.  Eli was grinding against him - and how was he already hard again?! - the delicious burn of his pulled hair setting scalp on fire as Eli took control of his mouth, took over taste and stopped any attempts at shuddering breath. 

All he wanted was Eli, all he could think about was Eli.  Eli over him, riding, grinding, saying his name again like...like it was the best word anyone had ever invented.  Eli under him, writhing and bucking and fighting against how he pinned him down while he just fuc-

 _Ok, no.  No_.  Even just opening his eyes a bit, he could see the livid bruises on his brother face that had been growing darker and larger by the hour.  And then there was Laura with her angry voice on the other end of a cell call, expecting him home tomorrow bright and early for grounding and guilt. All he could see was Eli, head bowed, taking his berating ten thousand times over without complaining, shoulders slumping under the haranguing of their awful mother, jerking each time she slammed her fist on the counter and...  

Gabe wrenched his head to the side with force, chest rising and falling like he'd been running.   Hands reached up blindly, skimmed Eli's arms to grab his shoulder and finally pull him down off himself, twisting so they were face to face again instead.  It took a moment and a dry swallow or two  before he could look at Eli again and reach to cradle his cheek, pulling him in to push foreheads together.

"I want this, Eli.  I fucking want this... but you need sleep.  You needed sleep three hours ago."

 

Eli had been somewhere like cloud nine, surrounded entirely by Gabe - only Gabe, his breathing and his scent and the little half-smothered noises he made every time Eli dragged his hips forward just right - and he thought he might just keep going, grind down against him until they were both sweatslick and he could reach between them and do it like he'd seen the guy do in that porno, line up his brother's cock and sink down and --

Gabe had pulled away, but he didn't care, not really; he could still shove his hips down, still force the friction he so desperately needed, and he had arched his back to do just that when Gabe moved, and he was suddenly on his side, and slowly he opened his eyes to glare petulantly at the rat bastard who was holding him at arms' length.

"Whaaaaat?" He said, when enough blood had made it back to his brain for him to figure out that Gabe was telling him no. He whined, squirming a little where he laid, pressing his thighs together as if it would stop his cock from throbbing, and reached out to push fingertips into the skin below his brother's clavicle.

"Please tell me you're making a really bad joke," He ground out, the desperation clear in his voice. "You have to be. You can't seriously think sleeping is a better idea than fucking right now."

 

"I uhm, I'm... well, no."  Gabe was floundering and pushed to stop his brother mouth to mouth, pulling what words were left away with the sweet, slow chase and catch of lips.  _Tag, you're it.  I'm safe_.  Who knew how long it would last.

"You need it, Eli.  Please.  Just....ah...."   he couldn't stop when his brother reached forward to dig finger into skin like he'd for burrowing for secrets. "Please,   please." 

Fingers were tugging at Eli's scalp, prying at his temples, forcing him to look at him, to look hard.... but Gabe couldn't keep himself from that mouth.  Had to taste it again, had to have it close.  Elijah was going to be the end of him, he always knew it but he'd never known how good it would taste, oh god...

Slowly, sweetly he tried to push Eli down and away.  Tongue a slippery, soft thing against his brother's own, stopping words.  Maybe he pushed forward, was fucking himself slowly and inefficiently between Eli's thighs but...ah, it was wonderful.  But SLEEP, sleep, yes...

"No I just...I want, but... Eli please."

 

Eli smiled into the kiss, humming in triumph as he slipped his arms around Gabriel's waist and pulled him closer, one leg curling slowly around one of his brothers so that they could rut languidly against each other's thighs. It was a slow, burning thing, a light pins-and-needles prickling in his spine, and he slanted his lips across Gabriel's so he could lick into his mouth, their bodies moving sinuously in tandem.

Some small part of him was warmly smug at his brother's reactions, at his obvious lack of self-control when it came to him - but there was another part of him, a small desperate scared part of him that knew that he wouldn't have the courage for any of this come morning, that when the sun came up he had a number of things to answer for and a million other things would be on his conscience. Right now it didn't matter what they were doing, only that it felt good; it didn't matter that he was fucking his brother, that he was fucking another man, that he was fucking at all. It was Gabe - his best friend, his partner in crime.  It had always been them. They'd grown up blissful in their assumption that it would always be them.  Them against the world, them together.  Other people never factored in.

But it wouldn't look that way in the morning, and the part of his brain that was still functioning on levels other than yes and fuck and please knew that. Maybe tonight was the only time he could do this.

His lip cracked open again as he pressed forward, fueled by the thought of only tonight, and he could again taste blood between their mouths. It was beginning to become a familiar thing, he and Gabe and his blood, and he groaned against his brother's lips and pulled him closer, rolling backwards and dragging the other with him so Gabriel's weight pinned him to the mattress. He arched his hips, blunt nails digging into shoulder blades, and Gabe's next slow grind sent his cock rutting along the seam of his ass, and he inhaled sharply and broke the kiss, breathing harshly against Gabriel's lips. He grinned, rolling his hips slowly.

"Well," He said, breathless and unable to help himself from teasing his brother. "I suppose if you really want to sleep, we should... sleep."

 

Gabriel was opening his mouth to reply - in fairness he'd tried this several times now, but each time the only thing that came out was a breathless, strangled moan.  It would have been so easy, to just roll forward, pin Eli under himself and fuck them both into a blind stupor.  God, he wanted to.  Eli's teasing was wearing patience thinner than a knife's blade, but that niggling, worrisome doubt was already lifting its ugly head again in the back of his mind.

What if tomorrow when Eli was truly sober, when he'd had some time to think on it, what if he came to his senses?  What if he woke up tomorrow, sore and satiated and sober and rolled over to find his brother spooned against his back?  And then remembered...  and was horrified?   That dark little monster of doubt didn't care how far they'd both already eclipsed appropriate, oh no.  It fed itself on the events past few nights, growing stronger by the second.  Eli prying for redemption in a darkened church, Eli mortified at how he'd got him hard just frisking jeans for his cigarettes, Eli fleeing a bed they had shared, leaving behind a tattered, bloody t-shirt and nothing else...like a guilty party fleeing a crime scene. 

There were a lot of things that Gabe could take in life.  A lot of unfair, awful things he could stomach...hell, that he had stomached.  Elijah hating him, or worse hating himself because of some drunken, over-emotional sex was not one of those things. 

So, Gabriel was opening his mouth try to reply again, to try to force denial outward, when Eli's lip only a scant inch away form his own cracked its scab and split again.  Gabe had shoved forward and had his brother's lip in his mouth before he could blink, was pulling him closer, tighter with each hungry, greedy little sucking draw of a kiss.  Sweet, metallic taste flooding his mouth, drowning that evil, bitter doubt under its weight. 

 

Eli hummed into the kiss, pleased. Had they been anywhere else, he would have expected his brother to pull back just to piss him off - Gabriel was usually the teasing bastard of the two of them, and many of their most ridiculous evenings had included impromptu fistfights when the other had decided that he was going to withhold liquor or sugar or whatever vice they were gorging themselves on that night. Not serious fistfights, mind you. Gabriel had been able to get him in a headlock within three seconds of just about every fight since they hit puberty, which had never ceased to annoy the hell out of him. Eli supposed if he attempted to hit Gabe these days he'd be flat on his back before he could swing a fist... and that thought shouldn't have made him shiver, but it did.

Sharp teeth grazed across his lip, and he groaned against Gabriel's mouth, nails digging harshly into his brother's skin. He could get off like this, he thought; grinding slowly and kissing, every pleasure a slow burn up his spine. It would take a long time, but that only made it better, the thought of the two of them entwined and writhing for long minutes as the heat between them slowly built to a crescendo.

Slowly, he twisted until he could pull just enough away from Gabe's lips that he could speak, his eyes half-lidded and cheeks flushed.

"Remind me to get punched in the mouth more often," He said breathlessly, and licked at the blood that had gathered along his lip. Gabriel's treatment had widened the wound, and blood flowed freely. He kissed his brother on the cheek, and then tilted his head back to bare his throat. "Here."

 

Gabe had planted hands in the mattress by the time Eli managed to pull away, the clenched support of fists tight enough to make the bed linens groan in soft protest at his grip.  He didn't understand the way Eli turned his face, why he was pulling that sweet succor away, and for a moment he chased it, made it hard to escape, but eventually he gave in and reeled back slightly, braced over his brother and panting for breath, those cold eyes looking half-feral as wide as they were with pupils a bare pin-prick in their unnatural hue. 

Eli's mouth was hot as it pushed against his cheek, and god help him, Gabe had to struggle to understand what was being said to him.

And a bared throat.

Gabe was suffocating. 

Every last thought bent upon bleeding the beautiful, perfect boy under him dry as a goddamned husk while fucking what life remained right out of him.  Every thought but one.  And really, all it took was one last shred of reason.

"No." 

It wasn't cold or callous, not with how thick that word was and how it stuck in his half-parched throat.  It sounded much more like defeat.  But it still left no room for argument.  Especially not when he tried to clear his throat and speak again as he pushed up and off of Eli, rolling over to give the other boy his back as he curled in on everything there was within him that wanted the exact opposite of this stupidity.  Wanted its own stupid and reckless way.

"No....no thanks, Eli...It's getting early.  You have to be home soon and I need to sleep."

Face screwed up, eyes scrunched tight at his own lame excuses.  God, he was an idiot, a fucking idiot...but neither of them could be trusted right now, and he wasn't going to be the one to give in to that risk.  He cared for Eli far too well for that.

 

Eli had been smiling slightly, watching Gabe out of the corner of his eye as he laid back, legs still loosely hooked around his brother's hip... and then movement had ceased, and the smile had just been transforming into a confused frown when the half-snarled No made him freeze. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Gabriel, his eyes wide and brow furrowed, but by the time he'd caught a glimpse of the rigid, tense frame of his brother he had moved, and the next thing Elijah knew he was staring at the white ceiling, and all of his skin was decidedly cold by comparison.

There was a moment of fraught silence while he stared at the ceiling in dismay, and then he was scrambling to sit up and shove back the covers of the bed - on his side, because Gabriel was doing a stalwart imitation of a fucking rock on the other side of it - so he could wriggle under them, still staring half in disbelief at the long line of his brother's back. Finally there was silence again as the heavy motel sheets settled around him, and he glared at the back of Gabe's head, absently curling his legs up against his body to dull the frustration of his still very awake cock.

"Okay then," He grated out, and the words felt like an axe against a closed door. He huffed, loud in the silence. "Could have just said you didn't fucking want to, you goddamn jerk."

 


End file.
